Game Time - September 2017

I've been waiting for the month of October all year. Tomorrow one of my best friends is getting married. Then at the end of the month I'm going on a week long vacation leading up to my 24 hour Extra Life stream. I have an action packed few weeks ahead of me, but before I can fully dive in I have to tell you about the games I played in September!

The month started strong with Monster Hunter Stories. I am still playing it every so often, but have not yet completed it. I never would have guessed that a Monster Hunter JRPG targeted at children would appeal to me so much.

Then a few weeks later Capcom dropped Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite. The presentation of the game and marketing leading up to its release made it seem like it was going to be a garbage fire. Unsurprisingly people are trashing it to the ends of the earth and back. The kicker is that it's actually super fun to play! I really like it.

The last game I played was Cuphead. The hotly anticipated indie release has finally come out, and it's everything I was hoping it would be. The 1930's cartoon aesthetic needs to be seen to be believed. In motion it looks stunning. On top of that the frantic boss fights are very fun and challenging.

We have a lot to talk about. It's game time!

Monster Hunter Stories

The fact that I love Monster Hunter is no secret. I feel deep into its trap a few years ago and haven't looked back. It's been a while since a Monster Hunter game has been released in the West, and for some reason Capcom decided to keep XX as a Japan only game. While Monster Hunter World will release in late January the only thing to tide me over until then was Monster Hunter Stories.

The Monsters you know and love are here, but they're small and cute now!

I normally never download demos of games, but I had to know what this one was about. What's crazy is that the demo is just the first five or six hours of the game. You can do almost everything available to you, and the progress even carries over to the main game. By the time the demo concluded I was hungry for more, and ended up getting the game when I otherwise wouldn't have.

I think the most surprising thing about it is that it is essentially a Pokemon game. You collect and battle with cute versions of all your favorite monsters from the series. It starts off very simply. Battles consist of choosing one of three types of attacks, either Technique, speed, or power. Each beats another, so you're playing roshambo. If you lose a trade the enemy still takes damage, but not as much as they would have. Each monster has its own tendencies, so just like Monster Hunter you need to learn each enemies habits to beat them effectively. As the game goes on the patterns get more diverse and you can mix things up by using skills of your own. It has a ton of charm, and while it's not the most complex game out there it manages to capture the charm of Monster Hunter in its own way.

Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite

In my eyes Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite will be the new Street Fighter V. Everyone on the Internet will mercilessly dunk on it without having actually played the game. Alternatively it could be used as a case study in how to absolutely fail to market something effectively. From the start Capcom has mismanaged this games public perception. The models don't look great, but initially they looked even worse. Chun-Li's face looked so bad it quickly became a meme. It is also now coming out that the team was given a very small budget and an incredibly short time to develop the game (to the surprise of no one). When you add in the fact that the roster is largely old characters composed of re-used assets it's hard to see the game in a positive light.

Despite all of that, I decided to try it out anyways. My brother is an absolute Marvel vs. Capcom fanatic. Marvel 3 was the first fighting game he got truly good at, and I loved watching him play. Hell, I just love watching Marvel in general. So I am happy to report that this game has excellent gameplay. The fighting is good in this fighting game. I can's stress this enough. Yes, you only use two characters now instead of three, but the fact that you can tag your partner in at any time and continue your combos allows for so much creativity. The control has changed up a little from 3. You now have a light punch, heavy punch, light kick, and a heavy kick. Crouching heavy punch is a universal launcher, so doing sick aerial combos is still very easy to do. It's fast paced, and very fluid. It feels good!

Still screens look so bad, but it plays just fine.

Do I think this game deserves a lot of crap for the way it was marketed? Yes. However, when you actually play the game its easy to see that it's a good fighting game. I don't think it's wrong to like a fighting game because the actual game is great, but the content surrounding it is not. So far it has absolutely tanked in sales, but I am personally hoping for it to have a long tail. Like Street Fighter V they are going to be selling DLC characters. Capcom has a plan for this game, so thankfully I think we'll have many years of Marvel tournaments to look forward to.

Cuphead

Cuphead began development in 2010 and it is finally seeing the light of day. The 1930's cartoon inspired game was first shown in an indie game montage during a Microsoft E3 press conference. Details started to trickle out and it was revealed to be a sidescrolling boss rush game. Even back then it was said to be fiendishly difficult despite its playful cartoon look. At first there were only bosses, but the game was put back in the oven to add some platforming levels. I can safely say that the platforming levels are my least favorite part of the game, but the bosses are awesome.

Cuphead is a relatively simple shoot-em-up. You run from side to side and shoot magic bullets from your finger. The challenge comes from the fact that you need to keep shooting while simultaneously dodging everything that gets thrown at you. You begin each encounter with three health, and after three hits you're finished. In order to defeat your enemies you'll need to learn the patterns for each phase of the fight. Damaging enemies enough will get them to change up their strategy. It's cool, because you never know exactly how long a fight will go, but if you fail a progress bar of sorts will let you know how close you were to victory. To ease the burden of the game you can purchase different types of shots and charms to help in specific scenarios. The shots have varying damage and range, while charms will give you specific power-ups. While it's certainly possible to beat the game with the default shot and no charms it's not necessarily going to be easy.

If I didn't know better I would think this is a still from a 1930's cartoon.

The game is definitely about the gameplay, but it does have a story. It's actually surprisingly dark. Cuphead and Mugman sneak out of their home and visit a casino. They get on a hot streak in craps and think they're unbeatable. Turns out the Devil owns the casino and he challenges them to a bet. If they win, they get tons of cash, but if they lose he gets their souls. They obviously lose, but plea for their souls. The devil agrees to release their souls if the duo can collect other souls he is owed. So each boss you defeat is someone who owes their soul to the devil. Both this concept and the difficulty are in direct opposition to the beautiful and fun art style, which might be why everything works so well. This game controls like a dream and looks like you're literally playing a cartoon. Cuphead rules!

OCTOBER!

As I stated at the beginning of this fabulous edition of Game Time, October is upon us. I am unrealistically excited for Fire Emblem Warriors. I've been craving some mindless Dynasty Warrior action and now I can get it! However, the true best Switch game is also releasing. Super Mario Odyssey will be out right before the end of the month. I can't even begin to describe how ready I am to play a brand new 3D Mario product. It's been a long time since Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Odyssey looks like it's going to be a worthy successor.

What's even better is that both of those Switch games are going to be out in time for me to play them on a five hour plane ride. It will be my first plane ride with a Switch, and it should be a great time.

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 - August 2016

I went quite a bit without playing video games this month, because I went on a week long vacation. Somehow, despite all the relaxation I managed to play a whole lot more in August than I thought I did.

Originally I expected to be playing a whole ton of No Man's Sky. However it didn't turn out to be as captivating as I wanted it to be. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a really cool game, but the "gameplay" aspect of it leaves a lot to be desired. That's why I ended up playing a whole ton of Starbound, which finally exited early access with its official 1.0 release.

Before I get into all the space video game talk let me regale you with tales of how I got homebrew to work on my 3DS and imported the newest Taiko Drum Master! It's game time!

Taiko no Tatsujin: Dondon! Mystery Adventure

Nintendo has been region locking their consoles forever, which is a total bummer. It's especially odd since both Sony and Microsoft have given up on the practice. There are a ton of games, especially on Nintendo platforms that don't make it outside of Japan. I've known of ways to make the 3DS region free for a long time, but the easiest and most common method required a cartridge that costs a ton. Somehow on the newest version of the 3DS firmware an exploit was discovered in the web browser that would let you run unsigned code by visiting a certain website. It's incredibly easy to do. I don't want to get into the specifics here. If you're interested look up 3DS browserhax and menuhax.

Now that my 3DS can play games from any region I made the choice to import a game that I've been wanting for a long time. Long time readers may remember that the last game I imported was Taiko Dum Master V Version for the Vita. The series releases on one console at a time, and for the most recent release it happened to be the 3DS's turn. V version introduced RPG battles to the classic rhythm game formula, but this new game takes it a step further. Instead of just battling Myustery Adventure adds a whole RPG adventure. You still battle enemies, but you also get to walk around an overworld and interact with various characters.

Explore the world as a friendly talking drum!

The core gameplay is the same as it has always been.  Red notes indicate head hits and blue notes indicate rim hits. If you're large they require you to hit two buttons of each type. It's easy to learn, but crazy hard to master. It still has the ridiculous Oni difficulty, which I don't know how anyone can realistically do.

Since the whole thing is in Japanese I don't really know what's going on in the story. This means that I get the most satisfaction from just playing the rhythm portion of the game. In the story mode you get into random battles as you walk around. This is fun until you realize that you're going to be hearing the same song over and over in each battle. Eventually the songs change as you advance, but the battles happen with such frequency that you'll grow to get annoyed by the songs rather quickly. Outside of that the battles are interesting. You collect monsters to fight alongside you and they all have their own unique skills. Luckily the google translate app works with pictures now, so I can loosely know what each creature does.

Recruit all kinds of monsters to do your bidding in battle!

So far I like the game quite  a bit, but I always like the core gameplay of Taiko Drum Master. It's cool that they're trying to add in more replayability as they continue on with the series, but I don't how valuable it is in the end. Yes, you're doing "different" things in the game, but in reality you're still just playing a Japanese rhythm game. That's totally fine by me.

No Man's Sky

When I first heard about No Man's Sky I became very excited. The thought of exploring a procedurally generated galaxy with all kinds of interesting planets. Then I realized that the team making the game was the same team that had made Joe Danger. For those who are unfamiliar Joe Danger is a sidescrolling motorbike game where you try to do tricks. It controls well and is a lot of fun. As you may have surmised it is vastly different from No Man's Sky in almost every single way. It was because of this that I tempered my expectations. Hello Games had made games before, but nothing on the scale of No Man's Sky.

Apparently most people who bought No Man's Sky didn't adjust their expectations as I did. The backlash I've seen for this game is bonkers. I'd like to say that it's totally undeserved, but it isn't. While I don't think No Man's Sky is a great game I do think that it's a technical feat. While they delivered a sprawling galaxy for players to explore it isn't necessarily "fun" like I wanted it to be. Yes there are technically a Quintilian planets, but when there's nothing to do on them other than mine for resources so you can get to other planets it doesn't make for a very compelling loop.

Who likes to mine resources?

See, that's what happens in  the game. You're stranded on a planet and you need to find the resources to fix your downed ship. You can go off on your own, or follow the path of Atlas and be guided to where you need to go. Once you get the resources you can move off the planet and go to another one. Then you, just kind of do the same thing over and over until you get to the center of the universe. You collect resources so that you can upgrade your equipment and collect more resources. There's a little more to do than that, but I'm largely being serious when I say all you do is collect resources.

This wouldn't be so detrimental to the experience if you started off with an appreciable amount of inventory space. Instead you'll be full up within minutes of starting the game. Inventory management isn't fun! Items don't even stack. If you get some carbon, you'll be able to carry a stack of it, but if an NPC gives you a magic ball you can only keep one per inventory slot. You can upgrade your personal inventory and get larger ships with more space, but you still need to be constantly looking in your inventory because there are other systems that require you to do so. You have life support systems that need to be replenished with resources, and your ship's fuel needs to be refilled as well. It's all a bit tedious.

You're going to be refilling your ship's fuel a lot.

When you're not foraging for resources you may come across one of a handful of events. There are settlements you can come across that will either have a person inside, a "puzzle" to solve, or a weird plant infection. I'm not exaggerating these are the three events you can have happen when you come across a settlement. Talking to NPCs is interesting, because at first you don't understand their language. As you explore plenets there are obelisks to find that will teach you a single word of the local alien language when you approach them. So far this has been my favorite part of the game.

Planets will also be inhabited by flora and fauna too. You can scan them and then upload the discoveries to the server for a reward. Each discovery grants some currency you can use to buy more resources. If you want you can name each discovery, but I found myself uploading them with their default names most of the time.

No planet I visited looked as cool as this.

No Man's Sky is really cool. The procedurally generated animals, plants, and landscapes are fun to see. However, that doesn't mean that you'll want to be doing it for long periods of time. This is why people are unhappy with the game. There isn't a lot to do other than explore. The lead on the game Sean Murray gave plenty of interviews prior to the games release and talked about tons of features they were planning. Not all of those features are in the final game, or have not yet been implemented, so now people are accusing Hello Games of false advertising. While I'd normally say this is ludicrous I do think that the marketing campaign behind this game could have been handled better For a very long time most people had absolutely no idea what the game even was. All they heard was that it had almost unlimited content through procedural generation and their minds filled in the rest. No one told them they were wrong, and instead the hype around the game grew to epic proportions. Like I've said a few times, the game is cool. I honestly think that with a few content patches this game could get a lot better, but right now it's just not doing it for me.

Starbound

Years ago I started to play Terraria with my brother and a few friends. I liked it better than Minecraft because it had a clear progression and minute to minute goals. I'm not the kind of person who can just build and have fun for hours at a time. I need clear and directed goals, which Terraria has. One night my brother showed us that a "space Terraria" was in development, which happened to be Starbound. It purported to be a Terraria-like game, but it took place in space with procedurally generated planets. At that time the game was in pre-production, but it eventually came out in early access and has now been fully released.

I played Starbound when it first came out in early access and enjoyed it to a certain extent. I began to tire of seeing the same prison colony on almost every planet and decided to give the game a rest. However, it did what an early access game is supposed to do. It showed me what the base gameplay would be like, so I knew what to expect when the game was completed. Now that the game is released officially I do like it a whole lot more.

Building is always more fun with friends.

To start I don't think that Starbound should be compared directly to No Man's Sky despite the fact that they are both procedurally generated space games. Starbound is meant to be a building game like Terraria and Minecraft. Hell, it looks exactly like Terraria because the lead artist is the same on both games. The comparison I will make though is that Starbound has a whole lot more going on with its planets than No  Man's Sky does. To be fair it is a lot harder to make 3D content than it is to make a ton of 2D sprites.

Starbound is almost literally Terraria in space. I know I've said that a few times, but it's 100% accurate. While in Terraria you have a single world, Starbound gives you an insane amount of planets to travel to. You can build on a planet, but you also have your own ship that you can place objects on. Since you'll be traveling across the galaxy it's best to store all of your resources and crafting tables on the thing you'll have with you everywhere. Starbound has an actual story progression to it, which I find to be refreshing. In Terraria all you did was beat bosses in order to unlock the next tier of ore and armor, but here you're on a quest to save the universe from a great threat.

This is Earth before it gets totally wiped out.

In order to save the universe you'll be visiting various planets and scanning objects that pertain to each of the game's races. Once you've done enough you'll be able to enter a mission, fight a boss, and then move on to the next mission. You don't have to though. If you're one of those people who's all about building and crafting sweet items you can do that as well. The story isn't a requirement and you can access everything without interacting with it.

When I find something cool on a planet in Starbound I get genuinely excited. Eventually I started to see some repeating areas, but then there are still new items to discover in chests as well. I feel bad comparing No Man's Sky to a much smaller 2D game, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to like exploring in No Man's Sky. In Starbound there is sweet loot to find, but in No Man's Sky all you can really find are new resources to mine and that's lame!

It's Time For More Cold Steel

God Eater 2 Rage Burst came out a few days ago and I've been playing a ton of that. Ir's the only Monster Hunter-like game that I still enjoy for some reason. Perhaps it's because the extreme anime edge the game has. It also helps that the combat is less nuanced than Monster Hunter, so I can mash like an idiot if I really need to. I've already played it for like 20 hours, so expect more on this anime hunting game in the next edition of game time.

You can also expect me to regale you with tales of Ace Attorney 6 and the 10 billion hour long RPG, Trails of Cold Steel 2. I played through the first game a few months ago with a friend and had a great time with it. It has one of the craziest ending twists that I've ever seen in a video game. I did the bare minimum and it still took me around 60 hours to get through, so I expect the second game to be similar in length. I don't know if I'll have enough time to beat it, but I will definitely be pumped to talk about it regardless.

It's been nice ranting at you all, but it's 4 AM now and I really need to get to sleep. See you next time!

Game Time - April 2016

I played two "hard" games this month, so to balance them out I played a whole lot of an easy mobile game as well. It's crazy to think that this will be two months in a row I'm writing about a mobile game.

Normally I talk a lot of mess about at least one of the games I play each month, but this month I don't really have a lot of negative things to say. I truly enjoyed the three games I'm going to tell you about.

Hopefully this is a trend that continues!

Hyper Light Drifter

I've been following the Development of Hyper Light Drifter for a very long time. Needless to say I was very excited to finally be able to play it. Prior to its release I didn't really consume a lot of coverage about the game. I watched a combat video, and a few of the trailers, and just from that I knew I wanted to play the game as soon as possible.

It's weird, because the developer of the game describes it as a combination of Diablo and Zelda. I definitely agree with the Zelda, but not at all the Diablo. For starters it's not an RPG, and the weapons you get don't really have stats. You don't even really level up. I would however call it a faster paced Zelda. The crux of the game is that you are a dude with a sword. You can slash your sword, shoot a gun, and dash. The dash is super quick and allows for you to dodge incoming enemy attacks.

Think of it as a much faster Zelda.

At first I thought the combat was super hard, but eventually I got used to the pace of the game and started to do a lot better. You need to be careful, because enemies can shred your health when they get in a few hits. It's important to learn how to use the dodge early on, or you're going to have a lot of problems. Each enemy has a set attack pattern that they will repeat. Once you learn what it is you can dash appropriately to get around them and get in a few slashes. It's very important not to get greedy, because like I said the damage enemies dish out is severe.

Browsing gaming sites I've seen all kinds of opinions about this game. Some people think it's too hard, and others think that it focuses more on style than substance. Like I said, I don't think the game is super hard once you get used to the mechanics. It gives you all the tools you need to do well. Dashing and slashing are great, and the addition of your gun makes things a bit easier. The style versus substance argument is also one that I do not necessarily agree with. Yes, Hyper Light Drifter is a beautiful game with some amazing pixel art. While the combat isn't ridiculously complex, it is varied. There are quite a few enemy types in the game and they all move and hit differently. The game is rather short, but that doesn't mean it isn't a substantive game. It's filled to the brim with secrets and challenging combat.

The game is absolutely beautiful at times.

If there is one thing I could criticize Hyper Light Drifter for it would be the way it tells its story. To be honest I don't know what's actually happening in the story. There is no dialogue, only cutscenes. I believe that the main character has a disease that he is trying to cure by finding vials of antibodies around the world. I have no way of actually knowing this though. To make things more confusing at the beginning of the game there is text telling you how to dash, shoot, and slash. However, after that there is nothing. You have to figure out where to go and what to collect on your own. It's both frustrating and cool at the same time. Looking at the crazy map and figuring out where you need to go is fun at first, but if you miss something then it's super annoying to find. I'm of two minds on this. At first it's rough to figure anything out, but by looking at the environment you can form ideas about what's going on and what you need to do.

Hyper Light Drifter is a cool game. Dashing around and cutting down foes with a laser sword feels satisfying. It's only around eight hours long, but there are a ton of secrets to find. If you are a Zelda fan, then I recommend checking the game out. Right now it's only out on PC, but it should be coming to the PS4 at some point.

Dark Souls 3

You may have already seen it, but I recorded a podcast about Dark Souls 3 and my thoughts on the Souls series in general, which you can find here. I talked a lot about the game in general, but here I'll be talking about the Dark Souls 3 specific changes and how I felt about them. I want to preface this by saying that I enjoyed Dark Souls 3 a great deal and I can't wait for the DLC. It feels like a fitting conclusion to a series that has reached a ridiculous level of popularity. At this point in time most people have played Dark Souls, so I'm going to assume you have a base level of knowledge. If not, then you might want to skip this section.

Okay, so I didn't really like Bloodborne very much. I think it was a great game, but it just wasn't for me. While it was similar to Dark Souls in many ways it forced you to play as a light character and dodge all the time. In Dark Souls I like to play as a walking tank man with a great sword. Tank through most fights and obliterate the enemy with a ton of damage. You couldn't make a build like that in Bloodborne, which is why it was less appealing to me. Much to my dismay Dark Souls 3 took some of the things I didn't like about Bloodborne and it really bummed me out. For starters armor doesn't really matter in Dark Souls 3. Yes, some has better defense than others, but not enough for it to really matter, The extra weight makes you fat roll, so you have less invincibility frames when rolling. In the previous games in the series that didn't matter to me. I could still roll well enough and if I got hit I could tank through it. Dark Souls 3 makes armor more cosmetic, because you can't upgrade it at all. This meant that I had to drastically change my play style to beat some of the games bosses.

Even this guys armor is straight out of Bloodborne!

I tried to be my tanky build for as long as I could. When I reached a certain boss I could no longer continue to play the way I used to. The boss was too fast, and I would get obliterated again and again. I took off most of my heavy armor and switched to a lighter sword and beat the boss without getting hit. That sucks. I shouldn't have to change my play style. The issue is that many of the enemies in Dark Souls 3 are faster than they were in the previous games. The changes to armor make it a lot rougher for a build like mine. However, I still managed to make it through the game easy enough.

Other than that I liked Dark Souls 3 a lot. I felt that the bosses were more unique than they were in 2, and the areas were a lot more open as well. Dark Souls 2 felt too contained to me, so it felt good when 3 opened everything up a lot more. It's still very linear, but the areas are wide enough to feel like the game isn't just leading you down a singular path. I actually feel like the linearity of the game fits with this being the final game in the trilogy. You're being pushed towards a conclusion.

So much fan service! *Squeeee*

Dark Souls 3 would be a good place for people to enter into the franchise, while at the same time it is filled to the brim with things that only people who have played since the beginning will understand. In my opinion this iteration teaches the player what they need to do better than any of the others. It's entirely possible that I only feel this way because I've played all the other games in the series though. I am sure about all the fan service though. There were multiple times where I entered a new area, or got a new set of armor that had me squealing in delight.

It's the same type of game that we've all come to love over the past few years. It's hard, and can get very frustrating. If you didn't like any Souls games prior to this, then Dark Souls 3 won't change your mind. It's a fitting conclusion to what is in my opinion a brilliant series. I just can't decide whether or not I think it;s better than two. I might have to wait until after the DLC comes out before I can find the answer. Regardless, the original will always be my favorite.

Kingdom Hearts Unchained

I am normally not a fan of mobile games, which makes it odd that I'm talking about another mobile game this month. I fully expected Unchained to be a shallow cash grab, but instead ended up finding something that I enjoy quite a bit. Yes, it is still trying to get you to pay cash, but I think that it's really bad at doing that. Like most mobile games that have come after Puzzles and Dragons, Unchained uses a stamina system to gate how long you can play. The issue is that everything in the game costed half stamina for the duration of April. This meant that I could play a ton of the game at a time and level up rapidly, which refills the stamina bar.

The game plays a bit like Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories. However, instead of cards you put medals into five slots on your Keyblade. When in a battle with heartless your medals will appear in order. You can do one of three things to attack. If you tap an enemy you will focus all of the damage on the enemy you tapped. If you swipe across the screen the damage will be split across all the enemies. Finally you can swipe on your current medal in order to do its special attack. Each medal has a different special with a cost between one and three. As you defeat heartless you regain some of your special meter. It's a simple system, but it works. There are also some interesting wrinkles to the regular mobile game formula like leveling up stamina, and health through cosmetic items.

I really like the title screen for some reason.

It's only been a month, and I've become one of the top 2,000 players in the game. The fact that everything was half stamina allowed me to fully level up most of my medals, which normally wouldn't be able to happen. Now that we're in May and everything is back to its original stamina cost I'm going to have to slow down a lot, which is a bummer.

Normally I'd play a mobile game until I hit a wall with leveling up, but there's something that keeps me going in Unchained. When I started the game I created a Party, which is essentially a guild. Including me we have about six active members. Each week the game ranks parties based on how much experience all of the party members have gotten. We managed to make it into the top 500 parties, which is insane. All of the people around us had the maximum of 30 members. That's insane! For some reason I like the feeling of seeing our party succeed with so few members. It keeps me coming back to the game on a daily basis.

The gameplay is simple, but I enjoy it.

It helps that the game has been out in Japan for a long time now, so they can add in "new" content to the version I'm playing at a quicker rate. This means that something new is happening on a weekly basis as opposed to a monthly basis. I don't like waiting, which is why I've stopped playing a ton of other mobile games. Also, I have yet to hit a bullshit paywall. I was able to get high strength medals and get to a high level without paying anything. I'm probably going to keep playing this game for the foreseeable future.

War Isn't About Being a Hero

For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to import Gundam Breaker 3 from Asia. It's a Gundam game where you build custom gundams and then battle other gundams. It seems really cool, and I can't wait to play it. Since I ordered a physical copy from PlayAsia I have no idea when I'll actually get it. It could come any time between this Friday and three weeks from now.

Other than that I will be getting Uncharted 4. I'm looking forward to seeing how Naughty Dog wraps up the series. Then at the end of the month I'll be getting the One Piece fighting game Burning Blood. It looks terrible, but I love One Piece too much not to get it.

Those will be the three games I chat with you about next month, so look forward to that!

The Great Undertale Experiment

This past Monday I played Undertale to completion in two sittings. It took me approximately seven hours to get through the game. For those of you who don't know what Undertale is, it's an indie RPG made by Toby Fox with the help of a few other people. It has been widely praised since its release and has accrued quite a massive fan base. When these types of games blow up I tend to ignore them, because I often find myself disappointed by the hype. However, in the case of Undertale I found myself profoundly interested within the first few minutes.

Around the time of the game's release I watched a video of the first hour or so on the video game website Giant Bomb. Not knowing anything about the game I wanted to check it out. I watched the entire video and got a grasp of what was happening in the game. In case you can't tell I'm being purposely vague here. It took me a while to get to the game, but when I did I was hooked, as I previously mentioned. On my first playthrough I got to the end of the game and it was possible for me to view the game's "true ending," which I did. Many video games do this, and I often find it annoying. It's normally frustrating, because you have to do a very specific set of tasks in order to see the best possible ending and the game doesn't let you know what those are.

Due to the fact that I had seen the advertising for Undertale, and the first hour of gameplay I was able to discern the path to the true ending. I absolutely loved playing through the game, and the ending is something that will stick with me long after other games I've played recently fade from my mind. Despite that I felt like I cheated myself out of discovering the true ending of Undertale naturally. I wondered how someone playing through the game with little to no knowledge would fare. Would they be able to do it? How quickly would they lose the ability to see the true end?

I reached out to a friend who I knew would be interested in the game. I made sure he knew nothing of the games marketing and hadn't seen anything about it. He agreed to let me watch him play through the game, which he would be doing completely unaware of the games mechanics. Below I will document my failed experiment.

If you're intrigued by this then I implore you to go on steam and purchase Undertale. You can play through it relatively quickly, and I think it's a truly worthwhile experience. The writing is excellent, and the gameplay mechanics are fairly unique. If you're not interested in playing the game, or just really want to read about the experiment, then please continue past the game's logo below.

I'm going to spoil the game's mechanics, and tell you how to get the true ending. You have been warned,

The basic plot of Undertale is simple. Long ago there was a war between humans and monsters. The Humans drove the monsters underground and created a barrier to seal them inside. The Monsters have been living underground since then, and are trying to make the best of it. You play as a human who falls down a hole in a mountain only to find that they are now trapped in the land of the monsters.

The steam page gives you a similar brief synopsis, and also has a list of bullet pointed features. It lets you know that you can date a skeleton, see a bunch of dogs, and hug a volcano. There are many bullets, but the first one states that killing is unnecessary. This is the key to Undertale. So, someone who stumbles across the game on steam will have this message implanted into their brain before they even boot up the game. For me it was taken a step further, because I watched that video of the first hour of the game.

Like many old school RPGs, Undertale has random encounters. You'll be walking around when all of a sudden you'll be pulled into battle. All you see in front of you is your enemy, and four options to choose from. In order from left to right they are FIGHT, ACT, ITEMS, and MERCY. Almost every turn based RPG I can think of has a fight command, which is generally the best way to start any combat scenario. In Undertale when you choose FIGHT a bar appears on screen and a white cursor moves back and forth on it. The closer you stop it to the middle the more damage your character will dish out.

Next up we have what is actually the most important command and that is ACT. In order to properly explain it I'll need to use an example. Let's take an enemy you fight a little way into the game. It's a deer that has been decorated by some local teens, and it is upset about it. IF you go into act, you'll be given a few more options. The first one will always be "check," which lets you see the attack, defense, hp, and a brief description of the enemy.  The other options are enemy specific, but in the case of the deer you have the options to decorate or un-decorate. If you decorate you can add more to the deer's burden. However, if you un-decorate it enough it will become thankful. Whenever you meet the requirements to make an enemy happy their name will become yellow. This means that you can go to the   MERCY command. Under MERCY you can either spare or flee. When an enemy's name is yellow you can spare them, which will make them leave the fight. You get zero EXP from this, but will receive some money.

This is what it looks like when you choose FIGHT.

Yes, I know I left out ITEMS, but it's not really important. You just use items to heal, there's nothing special about the command. Since all of these things take up a turn you'll have to defend against enemy attacks. This means that once you fight or act if the enemy is still in play you'll be transitioned to a defensive scenario. A box appears in the middle of the screen and a red heart is inside. This is the heart of the main character. Various white attacks will appear in the box and try to hit the heart. You have to use the analog stick to make the heart dodge the attacks. After a few seconds you'll be able to choose another action.

As with most RPGs you can level up, in this case it's called LV. So you need a certain amount of EXP to get more LV. This is where the game turns everything you know about RPGs on its head. You actually don't want any EXP, or you can't get the true ending. Near the end of the game a character judges you based on your actions. He explains that EXP stands for Execution Points, and that LV stands for Level of Violence. In order to see the true ending of Undertale you can't kill anything for your entire playthrough. I did this on my first way through, because I knew you could spare monsters. I just didn't know why I would want to do it.

This is where the final judgement happens.

This is where my experiment came in, but like I said it definitely failed. My friend started playing, and was a little way through the tutorial. The first combat scenario has you fighting against a training dummy. The game has you talk to it by using the ACT command. In the next room the first "random" encounter happens against a frog monster called a Froggit. My friend hit the attack command, and killed it in one blow. I didn't say anything when he did it.

A few rooms later there is a pedestal with a bunch of candy on it. A sign in the game says to take one. He took one, and then another, and another. When you take too much candy the stack falls over and the candy litters the ground. He felt bad about it and told me he wanted to load his save. At that point I could no longer hold back, because I'm a big softie. I mean shit, he felt bad because he took too much candy. Imagine how he'd feel if he got to the end of the game and realized he was executing innocent monsters. I asked him if he wanted to get the true ending, to which he replied yes. I followed up by asking him if he knew why he could no longer get it.

This is the Froggit in question.

At first he thought it was because of the candy, but I assured him it wasn't. He kept guessing until he said "I killed the frog." He then asked if he wasn't supposed to kill anything. I didn't answer, but he definitely knew at that point he shouldn't kill anything. I totally botched my experiment a few minutes in, but it was worth it.

I asked him why he attacked the frog, and he said it was because it attacked him first, which is actually not the case. When combat starts you go first. He attacked the frog first, but that's just because every RPG since the dawn of time has wanted you to kill your enemies. It's just the first thing your mind goes to. Does that mean we're all malicious killers? No, it just means that video games rarely have us question our actions.

He ended up playing all the way through the game without killing anyone and saw the true ending just as I did. From what I could tell he really enjoyed the game, which was cool to see.

There's something special about the way Undertale handles itself. Yes you get the "good" ending for not killing anything or anyone, but you totally can kill pivitol characters. You can strike down boss monsters and then they're completely gone from the game. It's cool that the game tries to give you hints so that you don't kill those characters, but it might not always catch on. Puzzling out the solution to resolve conflicts peacefully was often very stressful for me, but that made it more rewarding in the end.

It's probably a good thing I'm not a scientist, because I'd be super bad at keeping the experiment under wraps. I am still glad I tried it out though, because it yielded the results I wanted it to. I had a feeling that someone who was unaware would kill the first monster they met. It's funny, because even if he had figured out not to kill anyone else that one tiny frog would have kept him from seeing the true ending unless he started all over once he got to the end of the game. Instead of stopping him from seeing what I think is one of the best video game endings I've ever seen I had him restart before he got too far.

Undertale is special. Very rarely do I have so many emotions when playing through a game. I laughed out loud, smiled, and even teared up at one point. I tried my best not to tell you about any of the characters or scenes so that you could experience them for yourself if you haven't already. It's definitely not for everyone, but at the very least I think it's worthwhile to see the game's mechanics in motion.

Thank you for reading all about my failed experiment!

Memorable Melodies: Undertale from Undertale

Song: Undertale

Game: Undertale

Composer: Toby Fox

There is something about this song that hits me right in the heart. All of the previous songs I've put up for Memorable Melodies have just been sick jams, or songs I often hum to myself. This one is different. This one is special. I'm twenty-five years old, and this song brought a tear to my eye. I guess it was  a combination of the song and what was happening when it played in the game. 

Undertale is mostly funny, but in that moment it was undeniably sad. You walk into an area and it's immediately familiar. At that moment I realized where I was and what the game was going to tell me. The only way to advance is to walk through the area as a decidedly soul crushing tale is recounted to you. It's done in a rather creative way. You then understand why the world of Undertale is the way it is, and have to find the strength to do what must be done in order to change it. It's heavy.

It probably sounds like I'm being hyperbolic here, but I'm honestly not. Sure, it may not hit you in the same way, but it certainly did hit me. If you have a passing interest in video games do yourself a favor and play Undertale. Even if you're not a fan, it is still something that's worth experiencing.

This song is so good!