Game Time - June 2019

Game: Outer Wilds
Developer: Mobius Digital
Platform: Xbox One

There's something about space exploration that draws me in, but I need some type of objective. The entire reason No Man's Sky didn't hit for me is because there was no real goal, and since everything was randomly generated the chances of happening upon a cool sight was very low. Outer Wilds is almost exactly what I had hoped No Man's Sky would be. Outer Wilds is a space adventure contained in a single hand crafted solar system. You play as the newest spacefarer from a species that recently started a space program.

At first there is no real goal other than to go to space, but it quickly becomes apparent that much more is going on. Your first space outing might be uneventful with nothing happening at all, or you could happen upon ancient writings speaking of a long lost race. Regardless of how it goes you'll either be killed by your own naivety on a new world, or twenty two minutes will pass and a comet will plunge into the sun ending all life. The good news is that your character can never truly die. In the beginning they communed with a statue that in essence saves your memories. Every time you die you start right back at the point before blasting off to space, but you remember everything that happened.

This time loop allows you to gather information and explore areas, but the twenty two minute clock is always ticking down. Objectives are never made explicitly clear, but you will gather rumors to investigate and things you learn about each one will be logged on the ship. Outer Wilds gave me a sense of mystery that most modern games just don't have anymore. Most games are developed with the idea that the player needs to see everything they can, so games end up being a guided tour filled with hand holding. Outer Wilds isn't afraid to leave things unexplained, which certainly won't be for everyone.


Game: Cadence of Hyrule
Developer: Brace Yourself Games
Platform: Switch

It's a well known fact that I like rhythm games, so it was a no brainer for me to pick up Cadence of Hyrule. Nintendo has been loosening their grip on their IP over the past few years and with the success of Mario and Rabbids hopefully the trend continues. This time the developers of Crypt of the Necrodancer got to take a shot at making a rhythm based Zelda game, and the result is quite entertaining.

I desperately wanted to like Crypt of the Necrodancer, but my lack of patience never let me get very far. Thankfully Cadence of Hyrule plays very similarly to Necrodancer, but is much more forgiving. Like classic Zelda games of yore the map is broken up into a grid and you travel across different screens. Each screen is filled with enemies, which you need to move to the beat to vanquish. When everything is clear you are free to move around as quickly as you want in that block. The cool thing is that enemies are repeated frequently, so you can easily learn their pattern. Unlike Necrodancer, Cadence of Hyrule isn't a rogue-lite. When you die you won't lose all of your progress, just a few items that are easily obtained again within seconds of re-spawning.

What makes Cadence so special is that it flawlessly blends the rhythmic gameplay of Necrodancer with the classic enemies, world, and music of the Zelda franchise. The level of quality seen here is that of a main line Zelda game, which is excellent to see.


Game: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Developer: ArtPlay
Platform: PS4

Most people consider Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to be one of the greatest video games of all time. When the mastermind behind the Castlevania games everyone holds so dear, Koji Igarashi left Konami he started a Kickstarter for a spiritual successor. In 2015 the campaign earned over 5 million dollars, and now over halfway through 2019 we finally received the finished product. For the past few years the quality of the game was a bit concerning. Trade show demos and backer previews suggested that the game was sluggish and looked awful graphically. Luckily the team at ArtPlay took the criticisms to heart and delayed the game a few times to make sure they got it right. What we ended up getting in the end is a high quality Symphony of the Night-like game.

Thankfully Bloodstained doesn't ape Symphony of the Night whole cloth and introduces some elements from the later games like Aria of Sorrow that Igarashi worked on. It's still the same old castle exploration with RPG elements you know and love, but now there is crafting and enemy power collection as well. It's chock full of content, and overall feels very good to play. There are over 100 spells to collect that are all upgradable, and there are over a dozen weapon types that all feel vastly different.

Despite all the praise I'm giving the game it is certainly not without issues. Patches have caused game breaking bugs and caused horrendous slowdown. It's odd because neither of those things existed in the base game. The team seems like they are working on fixes as well as a bunch of DLC, but it does take a bit of the wind out of the games sales for me. While it may not be the exact same Symphony of the Night experience everyone was longing for it definitely manages to capture a similar feeling and even expand on the formula in some ways. I'm looking forward to seeing the game improve with fixes and content over time and what the inevitable sequel will have to offer.

Game Time - October 2018

Game: Super Mario Party
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: Switch

I don't really like Mario Party and I never have. However, there's something special about getting together with friends and talking as much shit as possible. It ends up being fun for a few hours, but I never really want to go back and play more of it. I feel exactly the same about Super Mario Party.

The last few games diverged from the classic board game formula where each player rolls a die, moves some spaces, and collects coins to buy a star. They got rid of all that for everyone to move at the same time and collect star bits. Thankfully this game is a return to the classic Mario Party everyone used to love. The stages tend to be a bit smaller than in the past, but at least you get to see all of the board events in a single sitting. The mini-games are generally pretty strong. Some of them work as excellent showpieces for the HD rumble the Switch Joycons are known for.

For the most part it's another Mario Party game. The main difference is that each character can either roll a regular die, or a character specific die. These die have pros and cons, but they make choosing a specific character actually mean something outside of aesthetic pleasure. It's a cool addition that shakes things up a bit, but it's not quite enough to move the excitement needle for me. It's a solid Mario Party game, but that doesn't really mean a lot coming from me. It's fun to play with friends for a few hours, but beyond that it's not great.


Game: The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories
Developer: White Owls
Platform: Switch (and everything else)

I first became aware of Swery 65 when I stumbled upon a video series about his game Deadly Premonition. The gameplay was abysmal, but the quirky characters and story pulled me in. He followed it up with the Xbox one launch game D4 where he attempted to make an episodic adventure game using the Kinect. Sadly Microsoft cancelled it after two episodes, which left him floundering for a bit. Recently he found his footing and started his own studio called White Owls. They Kickstarted a game called the Good Life about a town where everyone turns into cats at night. While that was coming together and being funded the studio was working on their first game called The Missing.

The concept of the game is certainly strange. You play as J.J. Macfield, a girl who is on a camping trip with her friend Emily. During a stormy night Emily wanders away from camp and J.J. desperately tries to find her. Very quickly J.J. realizes that she can get hurt and regenerate her body. This is the central mechanic of the game. J.J's body will get mutilated in various ways to solve puzzles. You'll need to weigh down platforms with limbs, catch on fire, get concussions, and roll through tight corridors as just a head. If it sounds a bit disturbing it's because it really is. The whole vibe of the game is a bit creepy and it's trying to convey something through its mechanics.

My biggest issue with the game is that I couldn't stand the actual gameplay. J.J. moves too slow, and every animation goes on for way too long. The overall performance was pretty rough on Switch, and I heard from someone who played it on PS4 that it wasn't much better there. I pushed through my low level of enthusiasm, because I know that Swery can tell a great story. In the end the game definitely delivered. I think it is an important story, but I can't really say what it's about without completely spoiling it. If any of this sounded interesting to you I suggest you check it out.


Game: Forza Horizon 4
Developer: Turn 10
Platform: PC (also Xbox One)

I haven't played a racing game in a long time, so I decided to see if Forza Horizon 4 would run on my PC. It's starting to get outdated, but I didn't want to have to bust out my Xbox One. Luckily the free trial of Xbox Game Pass allowed me to test it out for free. I'm glad I did, because it worked flawlessly. Much more importantly though I ended up loving the game.

Outside of kart racing games the last racing game I played for any extensive amount of time was Burnout Paradise and that was a long time ago. Most of the games on the market now are too much of a simulation for me. Thankfully Forza Horizon bridges the gap and sits somewhere between the insane acrade nature of Burnout, but isn't quite up to the hardcore simulation level of a traditional Forza game. This time you're attending the mystical Horizon festival in the countryside of England. In this fantastical world the Horizon car festival lasts all year long. This means that over the course of the game you get to experience all four seasons. I would have expected them to be purely cosmetic, but handling and weather actually change for each.

At the end of the day Horizon is a driving game. You pick one of the 8 billion cars you may have unlocked and choose a race to enter. There are tons of event types, so if you don't like something you don't have to do it. There are so many events that sometimes it's frankly overwhelming. It plays well and looks stunning. Even though I beat the "story" I have been going back in every so often to bang out a race or two.

Memorable Melodies: Killer Instinct from Killer Instinct

Song: Killer Instinct

Game: Killer Instinct (Xbox One and PC)

Composer: Mick Gordon

The reboot of Killer Instinct launched on PC a few weeks ago, so my brother started to play it. I've had it on the Xbox One for a few years now, but haven't really had anyone to play with. For some reason everyone is down to play it now, so I've been playing it quite a bit. I've always liked this version of the game, but I've especially been digging the music.

Fighting games are intense, especially Killer Instinct. The combo system is very simple, so even beginners can do cool looking combos. You can mash like crazy and something moderately cool will come out. The hits look and feel very hard, which goes along with the music. The songs are intense and really get the adrenaline pumping. 

The main theme of the game is my absolute favorite though. It's arguably a little too intense, but I like it nonetheless. It even plays in the menus, so you get to hear it a lot. Each time you move in a menu it plays a note of the song, which is super cool. More games should have musical menus.

Game Time - June 2015

E3 has come and gone once again, and many announcements were left in its wake. Like every year most of the really cool announcements won't become anything resembling a retail product for at least a year. E3 is the time of future hype, but doesn't necessarily do a lot for me now. If you didn't catch any of E3, or want to hear my thoughts I made a hot podcast! You can check it out here, or subscribe to Game Time With Manny on ITunes.

Sadly we live in the present. Due to that fact I've had to settle for playing the currently released products on the market. I mostly played The Witcher 3 this month, and ended up completing it the day Batman: Arkham Knight was released. I absolutely loved it and am very much looking forward to the expansions. I spoke a lot about that game in last months edition. This month it's all about the Batman. Much to the surprise of absolutely no one, the game is quite good!

The only other game I really put any appreciable amount of time into this month was Halo: The Master Chief Collection. While watching the Halo 5 demo during E3 I realized I had never played a Halo games campaign before. I have now completed the first game, and am close to the end of the second. I can see why people like the series, but don't really understand how it blew up so big.

It's Game Time!

Batman: Arkham Knight

For some reason I didn't play Arkham Asylum right when it came out, but I will never forget when I did play it. The Christmas after it came out my parents bought me an HD TV for my college dorm room. One of my friends had let me borrow the game to play over Christmas break, so Arkham Asylum ended up being the first game I ever played in HD. I wasn't expecting a lot from the game, but ended up playing it in three sittings. It would have been two, but I went to see a movie right before fighting the final boss. Arkham Asylum did so much so well. It more or less invented modern melee combat, and proved that even licensed games can be amazing when the developer does it right. It's crazy to think about how almost every single game with melee combat uses the free-flow combo system introduced in Arkham Asylum. The sequel Arkham city lost a lot of the charm its predecessor had on me. While it was cool to have a large open world to explore I missed the confined corridors of the Asylum. I skipped Arkham Origins and went right for Arkham Knight. It keeps the open world of the previous two games, but for some reason I like it a lot more.

The open world in Arkham Knight is the whole of Gotham, where Arkham City was a condemned part of the city used to hold criminals. While it was cool it just didn't feel right. The Batmobile adds to my enjoyment of the open world as well. Even though it's faster to fly around and grapple building with Batman I enjoy sliding around the streets, because the car feels so powerful. It helps that it can turn into a tank. I'm willing to say that I actually enjoyed the Batmobile segments of the game, which were pretty frequent in the beginning, but taper off towards the end. My opinion seems to be at odds with most other people though, because all I see is non-stop complaining about the Batmobile and all of it's tank fighting battles. Listen, the Batmobile is cool. At first it's kind of squirrely, but once I figured out how to drift properly I thought it was just fine. The combat scenarios are easy to maneuver in as well, because when it's a tank it can strafe with no issue. It has a powerful cannon and most enemies die in a hit. I can see the sequences getting annoying eventually, but the game isn't super long to begin with so it didn't have much time to wear out its welcome.

The Arkham Knight is a brutal villain.

As for the rest of the game it's standard Batman fare. The city has been evacuated because Scarecrow has threatened to release his fear gas on the city. This means that all the streets are free of civilians and filled with thugs to beat down on. You do still beat down on tons of thugs with the patented free-flow combat, so don't freak out about the Batmobile. I can't really talk about the plot a whole lot, because there are so many good character moments that happen in the game. For starters Batman gets hit with some fear gas early on and it has some pretty amazing side effects. There's also the new villain in play aptly named the Arkham Knight who is more or less a robot looking Batman. He has a grudge and desperately wants Batman dead. I was very excited to find out who he was, and the reveal did not disappoint.

I really liked the game, but still don't think it was as good as the original. Arkham Knight is still easily my second favorite though. There was just something missing from Arkham City for me, and from what I hear Origins wasn't a whole lot better. I truly hope that this is the last Batman game that Rocksteady makes. They keep referring to it as the end of a trilogy, but we all know that if Warner Brothers makes enough money they'll run the franchise to the ground. The ending to the game isn't conducive to another game, but in general I think that Rocksteady should be allowed to put their talent to work on a new franchise.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection

After everything was said and done on the first day of E3 I took a trip to the local Gamestop. While there I picked up a second Xbox One controller, and a used copy of the Master Chief Collection. Halo 5 looks like it has a solid plot for its campaign, and since I have an Xbox One I figured I might as well find out what all the fuss is about with the previous games in the series. Yes, like everyone, I played my fair share of Halo multiplayer. However, I never owned an Xbox, or Xbox 360 of my own, so I've never really sat down to play through a Halo story. I have now done that co-op and don't really get how Halo got to be as popular as it is. I realize that the main appeal came and still comes from the multiplayer, but I'm talking purely about the single player story here.

The plot of the original Halo is lame. That's really the only way I can describe it. You play as Master Chief, but you don't really know anything about him. We know he's a Spartan, he's got an AI companion named Cortana, and he has to kill the Covenant. The plot is not very well explained, and then when the flood is introduced it gets even worse. The Covenant accidentally released a race of what seems to be a plant-like parasites that take over dead bodies. This is where the Halos come in. An ancient race of aliens created them to wipe out all life in the galaxy, because apparently that's the only way to stop the Flood from growing. That seems like a terrible plan and obviously Master Chief doesn't want to do that. Things get kind of real, and you end up destroying the Halo. Turns out there are more Halos, and they need to be destroyed too. That's where Halo 2, and 3 come in!

Man, the Arbiter is so dope!

So, the plot in Halo is very generic. You control a super human soldier who is on a quest to stop the annihilation of the entire galaxy. It's been done before. It's even worse that I hate the Flood with a fiery passion. They're not challenging enemies, they're bullet sponges. All they do is run at you while you pump round after round into them! It's not fun! Halo 2 at least mixes it up quite a bit. You still fight the Flood, but you can kill them instantly and easily with a single sword swipe. That brings me to Halo 2, which I think is infinitely better than the original.

From the jump it's very clear that Halo 2 had a much larger budget than the first game. It looks worlds better, and plays even better than it looks. It starts with a full CG cinematic, which the first game definitely had none of. My favorite part is that you get to play as a member of the Covenant who is known as the Arbiter. He's pretty cool and starts off with an energy blade. The energy blade is by far my favorite weapon and does work on the Flood. I'm somewhere near the end and the story is taking a turn for the weird. Recently Master Chief and the Arbiter spoke with a horrific plant monster. The world is actually being developed quite a bit and I'm much more invested in the story now. I know that it ends on a terrible cliffhanger that everyone hates, but it's okay because I can just go right to Halo 3 when I'm done.

Summer Drought 

There's always a point in the summer when all major retail releases dry up. We have reached that point. Do not fear though, because I'm getting at least two games this month and they're both incredibly weird. The first is the new Godzilla game for PS4, which looks like it will be a stupid fun time. The second is a hot import release for the Vita, because I can't resist a good rhythm game. Taiko Drum Master V should be a fun one, but what sucks is I don't think it's compatible with the Vita TV so I won't be able to stream myself with a stupid smile on my face.

As always I'll be streaming Inazuma Eleven on Wednesdays, and random old fighting games on Thursdays. I look forward to talking to you all again next month! Peace out!

Game Time - January 2015

January is always a slow month for new releases, and this is one January where I am totally okay with that. I have a lot of games in my ever increasing backlog... Good thing I'm not playing them and have opted to play a ton of old games instead!

So, as you may have noticed, I've been streaming a lot more often lately. I am trying as hard as possible to share my love for Inazuma Eleven. I streamed all the way through the first game in less than a week and now I've moved on to the second. You can always check that out at Www.twitch.tv/drac96

I'm still working my way through Sunset Overdrive, but my interest is waning as the game goes on. That's the only "new" game I've been playing. I've spent a lot of time replaying old games this month. I replayed Pokemon Snap a few nights ago, and have been going through the original Super Mario. However, I will be writing here about the Donkey Kong Country series. I had never beaten the second one before, but now I have.

To go along with my more frequent streaming I did a playthrough of the Grim Fandango Remaster. Even though I played through it a few months ago for Extra Life, I still felt the need to play through the Remaster twice this past week. On my first playthrough I just wanted to see what it was all about, so I went through the game to get all of the trophies and listen to the director's commentary. I then went through it again on stream and beat it in under five hours.

Buckle up, it's game time!

Sunset Overdrive

It's official. I have been stricken with open world fatigue. Open world games are cool, but there is rarely anything compelling to do in the large open world, and the mission structure is almost always boring. Sunset Overdrive isn't really any different.

Yes, it has a whole load of style, but I just can't really ever get into it. The game is at its best when you're traveling seamlessly throughout the world. In terms of movement it reminds me of Jet Set Radio Future, but without roller-blades. For some reason the main character has magical shoes that allow him to grind on all surfaces, and he can inexplicably dash through the air. To me that's the best part of the game. The movement mechanics feel great, and make me as a player feel like I'm doing some legitimately cool stuff.

Traversing the world is fun, but shooting isn't.

Where it falls apart for me is that it is just another third-person shooter that takes place in an open world. Insomniac is great at creating zany weapons, but in the end you're still just shooting energy drink crazed monsters (basically zombies) with guns. It's even more frustrating, because almost every mission is a fetch quest, or deals with defending a single point. That sucks.

It's a shame the gameplay makes me feel this way, because I think Insomiac had some great ideas. The movement is amazing, and the world is filled with color and interesting characters. Normally these kinds of games keep me occupied, but I'm just getting a bit tired of them. I haven't played it in a few weeks, so hopefully when I boot it up later toady I'll feel refreshed. If not, I'll just have to take a break from open world games. It doesn't help that almost every release in recent memory has been open world...

Donkey Kong Country

During the SNES era I didn't personally own a lot of games, but I did rent a whole lot of them. I remember renting Donkey Kong Country one and two quite often. I personally was able to beat the first game, but never got a chance to do the second. For Christmas one year I was given Donkey Kong Country 3, which I still have now. I was also able to complete that.

New Years Eve Noukeo, Landers, and I were going to try and complete all three games on stream. However, Landers got sick, so we didn't go through with it. A few weeks later Landers and I decided to sit down and try to play through them all. We beat the first two games, but it took us nearly ten hours. We then went through the third game another day and that probably took us around two hours.

This isn't your Grandpa's Donkey Kong!

Just as I remember, these games are fairly difficult. Donkey King Country 2 is especially devious. The first two games took us a long time, because we weren't used to how the series handled at that point. If we did another run through, I'm sure we could do it much faster.

Prior to these play sessions I didn't like Donkey Kong Country 2 very much, but I've come around to it now. The music in it is incredible, possibly moreso than the other two entries in the series, which also have great music composed by Dave Wise. In fact, I'm listening to the song Klomp's Romp from the first stage of the game as I type this!


I feel that this series gets a lot of undeserved flak. People seem to think that the platforming hasn't aged well, and that the graphics look terrible. I still think the graphics look good, and they were top notch for their time. It's even more impressive when you think about how all three games were made within such a short time frame. The platforming is still some of the most satisfying I've ever played as well. It's something that's easy to learn, but hard to master. The series certainly ramps up in difficulty too. The first game starts easy and gets very hard. The second game starts easy and then immediately becomes punishingly difficult. We lost around thirty lives on a single level. After that we really had to step up our game. By the time we got to the third game I couldn't tell if it was much easier, or if your skills had just evolved from playing two.

This series is one that I have very fond memories of, and it was nice to see that reality matched up with my nostalgia for once. We're still planning on streaming it sometime, but we don't have any solid plans yet.

Grim Fandango Remastered

I'll say it before and I'll say it again, Grim Fandango is one of the greatest video games ever made. There are two games I attribute my continued video game obsession with, and they are The Ocarina of Time, and Grim Fandango. I first played Grim Fandango when I was around ten years old. It came out in 1998, and I played it a few years later. I was obsessed with Manuel Calavera and his journey through the Land of the Dead.

My dad worked in a computer store, and I would visit him there all the time and play a bunch of games. They mostly built computers and sold components, but they always had a shelf of software. It rarely ever sold, so the same games would mostly be there. One box that always caught my eye was Grim Fandango. Eventually I convinced them to let me play it, and I ended up with a burned copy of Grim Fandango. My dad left that job, but eventually went back to it a few years later. When he returned Grim Fandango was still there, and they decided to just give it to me. Sadly, I don't have the box, but I do have the original game discs.

I love all Grim Fandango related art.

It's been seventeen years since the game's original release, and now it has been remastered. The original publisher LucasArts was shut down when Disney acquired Lucasfilm. In a recent deal brokered by Sony the studio headed by Grim Fandango's writer Tim Schafer was given permission to remaster the game.

While I've played Grim Fandango countless times, many people have not. To make matters even worse it doesn't run easily on modern PCs. It only works, because fans have made programs and patches to get it to run. However, now anyone with a modern PC, PS4, or Vita can get in on the action. I've seen a lot of people complaining about this as a "lazy" port, but that's just plain wrong. As someone who's played this game recently I can tell you that the character models look a whole lot better. A whole bunch of lighting was added, you can play in 16:9, there are new camera-related controls, and director's commentary. Most important of all it's now available to many people in an easily approachable format.

I still think this would be the coolest tattoo ever.

I can't stress enough how much I think people should play this game. It is legitimately one of the best video game narratives I have experienced, which is helped by the fact that it's 90% narrative! The whole world comes together so well. Hell, it had incredible voice acting even in 1998! If you haven't checked this game out, you definitely should. At the very least you should watch my Extra Life stream where I played it.

Let the Hunt Begin!

There may have been no new games this month, there will be one in February. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate comes out on February 13th. Due to GameStop sucking, I won't be getting it until at least the 23rd. I won't get into it, but there's some stupid reason that they had to order the Monster Hunter 4 New 3DS bundle through their website. So I had to pay in full and get screwed on shipping!

I don't really care when I get it, because I'll get plenty of use out of it no matter when it comes. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate was my first entry into the series and I played it for almost 400 hours. This game has more content, and new mechanics! I bet I'll play it for even longer than Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. I'm very excited.

Next month be prepared for some serious Monster Hunter 4 talk. See you guys next time.

Game Time - December 2014

Looking back at all the games I played in 2014 I realized that this has actually been a pretty good year. I legitimately forgot that half the games I played in 2014 even came out during 2014. It was a long year huh? 

Even though we're living in the brand new year of 2015, I still have this final edition of Game Time to wrap up 2014 with. I did a lot in December. Much to my dismay I didn't especially complete any games. Instead I started a whole bunch more that I've just been pecking away at. However, it was the holiday season. I had to see my family, and hang out with friends who were home to visit.

It certainly didn't help that I purchased an Xbox One the day after Christmas to round out my current generation console collection. I purchased three games for it, all of which I've only scratched the surface of.

Another thing it seems I've only scratched the surface of is Dragon Age Inquisition. How in gods name am I 40 hours into this game? The game I probably played the most of though was Guilty Gear Xrd -Sign-. I played it both for my own personal enjoyment, and to record a bunch of video for my YouTube Channel. I thoroughly enjoyed it! In fact, I'm going to keep practicing it will into 2015. From the looks of it I may still be playing Dragon Age well into the year as well. It just keeps going.

Xbox One

Everyone seems to be upset with my purchase of an Xbox One. I don't really care though. I stand by my purchase. Never before have I had all the major consoles of a generation. Yes, there was an Xbox 360 in my home, but it was being used almost 100% of the time. So I missed out on a lot of great games this past generation, because I didn't really have the means to play everything. The same can be said about the GameCube generation. I had a GameCube when it was new, got a PlayStation 2 near the tail end of its life, and never had an Xbox.

I am now officially set and capable to play every single new game that's released, barring PC exclusives. I have all three major consoles and both handheld systems on the market. To be honest I thought that I'd immediately regret my purchase, but I don't. It was a little frustrating at first due to the Christmas hack attacks on PSN and Xbox Live. I needed to download some digital games and crazy large patches. The only thing that wasn't working on Xbox Live was downloading games.

It's so huge, and it still has a large power brick!

After a few hours of being pissed off Killer Instinct let me play the tutorial. I'm not good at fighting games, so Killer Instinct was pretty much made for me. That's not to say it's easy, but it is easy to do really cool long combos. Every move is a linker, opener, or ender. That means that you just need to figure out what links into what in order to do some crazy stuff. Since the combos are so long you have to end them or the opponent takes significantly less damage. You can also break out of combos if you know what strength attack the opponent is using. Overall it's a cool fighting game and I want to play it more.

I also purchased Sunset Overdrive, which I only played for about an hour. As a third person shooter with weird guns it seems pretty standard. The cool part is that you can grind and jump all around the city in a way that's very reminiscent of Jet Set Radio. I really haven't played a lot, but I find what I did play enjoyable.

I can't appropriately show how awesome the combos are in a picture.

My only problem so far with the Xbox One is that the UI is terrible. I don't even know how to describe how much I dislike it. There are square icons all over the place, but the ones you want to find are never there. Most of the tiles also do a poor job of explaining what they actually do, which adds an extra layer of bullshit. Like mobile phones the Xbox One has apps, and for some ungodly reason some of them default to a snapped view. If you view achievements it starts up in a snapped view. So you can see almost none of the information you're looking for. If I had a Kinect it might be better, because I could just yell where I want to go instead of looking for it. 

The Xbox One runs games well though, and it's going to have some killer downloadable exclusives in the next few months. There may not be many full retail games I want right now, but there will be. I figured I should save $50 by getting the thing now.

Dragon Age Inquisition

Dragon Age Inquisition seems like it's never ending. I've been playing for 40 hours and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. Part of that is due to the structure of the game. There are sidequests everywhere, and they all give little to no reward. Being a weirdo I am compelled to complete as many as I can, which has taken me hours upon hours. I've only done a handful of story missions, so I think in reality I'm only around halfway through the game. That's crazy.

Noukeo has played for way longer than me. He was at around 120 hours last time I asked, and he's at the same point in the story that I am! Due to that fact I've mostly given up on the side stuff, because it's my least favorite part of the game. In fact I don't really even enjoy playing Inquisition. Like most Bioware games I'm there for the story and the characters. What's sad is that in this case the overall story hasn't really grabbed me yet. The characters however, are all pretty good.

The Inquisition is a very diverse group of characters.

Bioware games have great character moments. If you listen to the game of the year podcast I describe a specific one I thought was amazing. The way you get to know the members of the Inquisition is cool, it just takes a while to get there. The beginning of the plot is wrought with political struggles, which can be a chore to get through at times. Where I am in the game now that has let up a bit, but politics is still at the forefront of the game. Once all the characters in your party settle down a bit they're actually pretty fun to hang around.

The big lug The Iron Bull is a Qunari mercenary, who talks a lot about sex and for some reason plays cards a lot. Seriously, I think I've played cards in like half of his character events. He's crazy and always has something interesting to say. The same goes for Cole. He's a spirit who has taken human form in order to help people. He can make people forget his existence. All he wants to do is help, since he can feel peoples emotions and hear their inner thoughts.

The Iron Bull is my favorite party member in Inquisition.

It would all be so much better if the combat in the game was any good. I loved Dragon Age Origins on just about every level. The characters were cool, and the gameplay was tough and filled with strategy. Dragon Age 2 came along and basically made it into an action game. Inquisition fits somewhere in the middle. It's mediocre MMO combat, that tries to shoehorn in strategy elements. Essentially you hold a button to auto attack and use your skills when they're not on cooldown. I'm on the normal difficulty and I tend to plow through most enemies with no strategy. You can however pause the combat and get a tactical view. If you want to can select skills and have the game move forwards at a snails pace. There's no reason for it though.

Inquisition is an odd game. I like it, but I don't seem to be having any fun while playing it. I like interacting with the characters, but the combat feels hollow, and the endless fetch quests are wearing thin.

Guilty Gear Xrd -Sign-

Guilty Gear Xrd Sign looks incredible. At first blush it looks like a brilliantly drawn 2D fighter, but then it zooms out to show you that everything is fully rendered in 3D. When you win the camera spins around to reveal that everything is polygonal. The first time I saw it happen in a trailer my mind almost exploded. Now that I can do it whenever I want it's still one of the coolest visuals I have ever seen in a video game. 

On top of its crazy visuals Guilty Gear is actually fun to play. It helps that I like all the character designs a lot, and the characters themselves are actually interesting. This iteration of Guilty Gear continues the story, but is a reboot in terms of the fighting system. Guilty Gear got so complex that there wasn't really an entry level anymore. With Xrd Sign they made it accessible again. No longer are Roman Cancels super hard to pull off, and not every move needs to be frame perfect. Sure the depth is still there, but now I can actually approach the game without feeling immediately overwhelmed.

Sol Badguy is my dude!

I don't want to talk too much about it, because it's another anime fighting game. That's super reductive, but it is. No one wants me to get into the intricacies of how Guilty Gear is played, especially since I'm not very good at it. I will say that I'm trying to get good though. I've actually been practicing combos with my boy Sol Badguy. I've got a few that I can whip out in a real match, but I still have a long way to go. 

The story is probably one of the best in fighting game history and that's because you don't ever play it. It's essentially a three-four hour anime. You watch as the characters talk and occasionally sweet animations happen. It's cool, because you get a sense of what all the character are like and since they're all fully 3D it's the same models that are being used in fights.

The seamless transition to 3D is ridiculous.

Overall Guilty Gear is an excellent package. The story mode is cool, the online works well, and the fighting is fun. If you like fighting games you're robbing yourself of a great time if you don't pick this up.

2015 is Coming

In the end 2014 ended up being a decent year for video games. I feel like I end up saying this every year, but 2015 is going to be batshit crazy. Half the games I was looking forward to in 2014 were delayed to 2015, which means that 2015 is filled to the brim with games I absolutely want to play.

What's even crazier is that we're not going to have to wait until the fall. Tons of games are going to start coming out in early February, and even March. It's going to be a crazy year and I hope that you'll stick around and see all that Game Time With Manny has to offer.

I haven't been streaming as much lately, but I plan to change that in the near future. As you may have heard in our sweet Game of the Year Podcast. I really liked Inazuma Eleven, and within the next two weeks I am going to be getting a 3DS capture card. I don't know how long it will take to get to me, but I'd guess around one or two months. So you have a lot of Inazuma Eleven to look forward to!

E3 2013: Microsoft Press Conference

The future of Xbox.

Microsoft kicked off day zero of E3 with their press conference as they always do. However, this year their press conference was arguably more important than it has been in recent memory. A few weeks ago they showed off their new console the Xbox One on live television to a somewhat muted response. They focused mainly on media features, which left a lot of Xbox fans feeling dejected. In addition to announcing that the Xbox One would not support used games and be subject to strict online connectivity

To cause further problems Microsoft released a statement detailing their policies for used games, online connectivity, and the Kinect. You can find those policies here. For those of you who don't know (Although that seems impossible at this point) games are linked to your Xbox live account. So you can only sell back used games to select retailers. This kind of DRM has been being pushed for by major publishers for a long time, but that doesn't mean that it's been well received by consumers. It doesn't exactly help that their clarified policies still aren't super clear.

Despite all of that Microsoft still brought their best to E3. While they promised that E3 would be all about showing the games they had to make some important announcements as well.

• Microsoft Points will be no more. It's only real money going forward!
• A partnership with twitch for online recording and streaming of games
• Another Xbox 360 redesign
• The Xbox One will launch for $499 in November

Microsoft promised a press conference full of games and they certainly delivered. I think it's safe to say that most of them aren't for me though. I missed a few of them when it was live, but I've since gone back to check out what I missed. Since I'm not a huge fan of shooters I'll just briefly talk about what I;m excited for from the Microsoft offerings.

Killer Instinct
Rare made some awesome games for Microsoft, but recently they've been relegated to working on the stupid avatars. Even now they're still not making a game I care about, but they are advising Double Helix Games as they reboot the oh so classic Rare franchise Killer Instinct. I say that sarcastically, because I don't think that Killer Instinct is beloved by anyone.

It always seemed like a Mortal Kombat ripoff, but I always had fun playing it. KI was very much a product of the 90's and I'm glad to see that it still is. So far only Jago and Sabrewulf have been shown, but they kept their outdated character designs. A gruff voiced announcer still yells when you complete combos and there is a weird amount of blood. It looks exactly like Killer Instinct and that makes me excited. I don't nessecarily know if anyone else will get excited for a very 90's-centric fighting game, but it's cool to see that Double Helix is trying it out.

Metal Gear Solid V
I'll be the first person to tell you that I don't think MGS5 should exist. In fact I'm not even excited for it. After the new trailer Konami produced for it I am at least interested in it though. The things I learned from the trailer were that it's an open world game, game time moves along with real time (At least I think?), the world seems large and empty, you have a crew, and you can go stealth on a horse.

Kojima has been going around saying that the themes in this game might offend or scare people and I'm kind of worried about that. In this trailer there were a few scenes with children that seemed kind of off. In one of them it seemed like Snake even shot them, but it was a cutaway. I don't really know. MGS5 looks insane just as every other MGS game. I just don't know if I want to experience that anymore.

D4
Swery, the man behind the terribly brilliant Deadly Premonition has been allowed to make another game. D4 is going to be an episodic release much like Telltale's The Walking Dead. It's a murder mystery in which you play as a man with time travel powers. He's trying to solve the murder of his wife, but I assume that since he has time travel powers he'll try to stop it as well. Swery is weird, so this game will probably be weird as well. It;s the good kind of weird though and I look forward to it.

Xbox One?

Microsoft showed a whole lot more, but it didn't really resonate with me. Titanfall the first game from Respawn Entertainment looks like a fusion of Halo and Call Of Duty with mechs. It's going to be an Xbox One Exclusive. Obviously there will be a new Halo game coming to the platform as well. A new Dead Rising will also be available if that's more your cup of tea. From what they showed it seems like a lot of the zany humor has been removed though, but we don't know that for sure yet.

People seem to be thinking that Microsoft is going to bomb in this new generation because of their DRM and their online connectivity. I don't necessarily agree with that. The Xbox One is still going to have a lot of top notch first party titles and a wealth of third party titles. The used game issue may cause a lot of problems at first, but it might not be quite as bad once the system gets off the ground. We're moving towards a digital only future already, so maybe Microsoft is just taking the first step

     -Manny