Mega Man Battle Network 4 Typo Picture Gallery

I've been replaying the Mega Man Battle Network series with a friend. Together we're on the third game, but in my impatience I began to play the fourth game as well. For the fourth game in the series they decided to employ a new art style. Apparently when they were employing new techniques they decided that a horrible translation was also in order.

There are some pretty bad translations out there, but this one is just inexcusable. Especially when you take into account how there were very little problems with the previous three games in the series. The only typo I remember was in the second game and it was easy to miss. I'd give the fourth game a pass also if it weren't for the fact that there are so many errors it's bananas. Don't get me wrong the writing itself in these games is nothing special, but they should at least have proper grammar.

Since there were so many typos I decided to take a picture with my phone every time I noticed one so that I could share them here. Yes, the quality is terrible, but you'll at least be able to see the text.

Enjoy!

These are just the ones I specifically noticed or thought were worth taking a picture of. One of the ones I left out was that every time virus should have been singular it was the plural viruses instead. EVERY SINGLE TIME! They say viruses a lot in this series, because every enemy is a virus...

 I realize we're all prone to making typos of this nature, but it's just bananas that a game was able to be put out like this. I'm on the final boss of the game now, but there should be a lot of extra stuff to do afterwards. Perhaps I'll have a chance to share even more ridiculous typos.

Game Time - July 2013

July was pretty dead in terms of new releases. As always though I was resilient and found something to play in the absence of brand new video games for me to consume. The one new game I played was a 3DS downloadable title, which was surprisingly good. Attack of the Friday Monsters is surely one of the best downloadable offerings that the 3DS has at the moment.

As for the oldies I took the plunge into the critically acclaimed Saints Row the Third and didn't find it to be very enjoyable. Alternatively I played the not so special Warriors Orochi 3, but had a ton of fun.

I played some Mega Man Battle Network as well, but probably won't write about it until I finish all 6 games in the series again. I'm at the end of 4 already, so that time is close at hand.

So yeah, I played some video games. Let's get into it. It's game time!

Attack of the Friday Monsters: A Tokyo Tale

Recently I was made aware of the series Boku no Natsuyasumi, which is a Japanese series exclusive to the PlayStation. Each game in the series focuses on the summer vacation of a child. Needless to say it's very much based around Japan and Japanese culture, so none of the games in the series have been released here. Then there's the fact that there isn't exactly a lot of gameplay. You walk around and play a few mini-games. From what I've seen the series basically amounts to a visual novel where you get to walk around, which sounds awesome to me. Which is how I ended up playing Attack of the Friday Monsters. The series creator of Boku No Natsuyasumi became part of level 5's Guild 05 project where developers make smaller download games for the 3DS. Seeing the game I got excited, but thought it would never see a translation. Much to my surprise the last time I booted up the 3DS store it was on there, so I purchased it immediately.

Attack of the Friday Monsters is just like the games in the Bolu no Natsuyasumi series. It's more or less a visual novel. However instead of focusing on summer vacation it revolves around a boy named Sohta who has moved to a new town. This new town has a television station where they film monster movies every Friday night. The kids and adults all gather at the top of the nearest hill and watch the battles play out, or at least that's what Sohta has heard. Since this game is only a story I won't give anything away. I will say that I think it was very well written though. The entire time the game keeps you guessing as to whether or not the monsters the villagers are talking about are real. Yes, there is a TV station, but that just makes you think the monsters are fake by default. As you progress you'll start to doubt that and ultimately find out what's true at the very end of the game.

Who could forget that the monsters come out on Friday!?

While the story is very well executed that doesn't mean this game was without flaws. All you do is walk around the town and talk to its various residents, which I loved doing. You get a sense of who everyone is and it's actually quite refreshing to be able to just leisurely stroll around. You need to find certain things or talk to certain people to advance the game, but the town is small enough where that's never an issue. Despite that the game gives you a glowing indicator of where you need to go at all times on the map which takes away any challenge. You're always going to know exactly where to go.

Apparently walking around and being immersed in the town wasn't enough for a downloadable title so they threw in a monster card battling game. That's all fine and good, but I feel that it actually takes away from the game. The way you collect cards is by finding a certain number of glowing "glims" on the ground. Once you have enough of the same color they'll form a card. When you have five cards you can battle the kids in town. If you lose to them you'll become their servant. They can cast weird spoken spells on you, but really all they do is make you fall down and stand back up if you lose or decline their invitation to battle. If you win however, you can do the same to them with the added bonus of them giving you any information you want.

Card battles are pretty boring.

The way you play is painfully simple. The game is literally ro-sham-bo. Each card is either rock, paper, or scissors with an attack value assigned. Each player throws down 5 cards face down. The game will tell you if two of your cards win, lose, or draw and give you the option to switch the places ot two of your cards. When both players do that all the cards are flipped over. If there are any draws the monster with more attack power takes the win. The person with more wins is the winner.

The card battles end up padding out the game unnecessarily. It's especially dumb, because if you yourself use the same magic spell as your opponent then they'll go easy on you, which basically means they let you win. Other than the card battles I really liked the game. It's not the kind of thing that gets released in the US often, so I was more than happy to support it. I could use some more visual novels that are more game than novel.

Saints Row The Third

This past year it was impossible to go without hearing how awesome Saints Row the Third was. Everyone seemed to love its stupidity, but seemed to agree that there was something special about the game. However, my brother who absolutely loved Saints Row 2 did not and still does not share that same opinion. He says that the campaign is too short and none of the jokes are funny. If prompted I can get him to go off on quite a rant about just how bad he thinks it is. He tends to exaggerate quite a bit and I think his hatred of this game is a bit too strong, but I do agree with him when he says he doesn't think it's anything special.

A lot of people were upset when GTA IV was a great deal more realistic than its predecessors. I was not one of those people. I liked the fact that GTA wanted to be taken a bit more seriously, but kept true to its kind of goofy roots. GTA IV still has its fair share of weird and childish stuff in it, but it takes a little more digging to get to. Saints Row on the other hand starting with Saints Row 2 went in the complete opposite direction. They threw out almost any realism the series had in favor of pure ridiculousness. What I do like about Saints Row the Third is that you're basically invincible in order to make the game more fun.

Right from the start you're more or less invincible. As the game progresses and you do side missions you'll earn money and respect which you can use to gain more abilities. I'm not at the end of the game yet, but I'll bet that by the time I am it'll take a serious amount of enemies to even make a dent on my health. I can rocket out of a car's windshield and walk away basically unscathed already.

Yeah, this is basically what the game is all about.

The issue I have with Saints Row the Third is that I don't have fun while I'm playing it. I might be a fool for feeling this way, but I play GTA games to go through the story. I usually don't mess around and cause as much destruction as possible. Saints Row the Third let me know right off the bat that it wasn't really the game for me though. It starts ridiculous and continues to gets even weirder. They do an amazing job of setting the tone. In fact some of those moments are the ones I enjoyed the most. Shooting up a mansion full of enemies while Kanye West's Power is playing is actually pretty funny. The fact that there is a pimp who speaks exclusively in an auto-tuned voice is probably my favorite part of the game. These things alone can't make me truly enjoy the game though.

The story missions revolve around trying to take down an evil syndicate that for some reason has it out for the Saints. What I really don't like is that so far I've been playing for around six hours and almost every mission is just an introduction to one of the far too many side activities. I have no problem with side activities it's just that I don't find any of the ones in this game fun. So learning how to do them just to unlock another mission where I do the same thing isn't very rewarding. Perhaps when I'm no longer relegated to this side mission tutorial hell the missions will begin picking up.

I feel like I don't need to say that the combat isn't very great, but I will anyways. It's the same type of third-person shooting that these types of games have always had (GTA included). I feel like there should have been some kind of vast improvement to the system by now, but there really hasn't been. You auto-lock on to your targets until they're dead. Or if you want to kill everyone way faster auto-lock and then flick the stick up a tad to aim perfectly for a headshot. It's something that I really hope is better in GTA V, because I don't find the combat to be any better in GTA.

Zimos is the best character in the game.

Saints Row the Third just isn't really the game for me. As I said it made it clear right from the start. Regardless I still don't think it's the masterpiece that everyone made it out to be, but that's just my opinion. But hey, if it's the kind of thing you're into the fourth one is coming out in a few weeks and it seems to be basically the same game but even more insane.

Warriors Orochi 3

I was trying to get my mind off of a few things, but didn't want to concentrate on what I was doing too much. What better way to play a game, but not have to pay attention than to boot up a Musou game. I quickly realized that I had Warriors Orochi 3, but had never played it.Knowing nothing about it I booted it up, because I thought it was just another Dynasty Warriors clone. Little did I know it literally was a Dynasty Warriors that crossed over with the other musou games like Samurai Warriors. You know what, this game is not good, but I had a damn fun time playing it.

As I've said many times in the past I really like Musou games. They're kind of mindless, but for some reason I find them to be fun. I don't really like Dynasty Warriors itself though. The character designs of the ancient three kingdoms just aren't outlandish enough for me. I don't want to beat down thousands of enemy soldiers with normal swords. I want something that's a little more crazy. So what if you added in Samurai Warriors? Apparently that's exactly what you need to get me on board. Warriors Orochi doesn't just bring the Samurai Warrior franchise on board though it also brings in the likes of Ryu Hyabusa from Ninja Gaiden and even Ayane from Dead or Alive. There are a ton of characters made just for the Warriors Orochi series as well. There are well over 100 different fighters in the game and most of them have insane weapons.

Her sword is electric. I'd say that's insane enough.

Unlike other Musou games this one lets you use three characters at a time. You can switch between the three at any time by using the triggers. If any one of the three dies you lose. When not being used the characters will restore health and constantly generate energy for their special attacks. It doesn't seem like a huge change but it makes the gameplay a bit more fast paced and exciting. With this new gameplay mechanic the ways you can beat down your enemies become so much more varied in a single combat scenario. They try to get change your character up in battle, because each character needs to actually participate in order to get experience.

Oh yeah, there's a story too I guess. The evil Hydra has killed almost everyone, except for the three main characters. They magically get sent back in time by this creepily pale girl in order to save all the other warriors and find a way to win against Hydra. You get to go through a bunch of huge battles where you fight all the characters because they either hate you, or are being possessed by demon magic. Once you defeat them they will usually join your cause. Sometimes you have to go back and beat the same exact map again, but it's been altered slightly. All that matters is that you have a ton of characters to choose from and most of them are pretty interesting.

Why wouldn't Ayane be in the game?

It's not a good game by any means. It's pretty tedious and barely has a story. Regardless I enjoy beating down thousands of soldiers with a single warrior. It's satisfying. Another version of this game is coming out later this year called Warriors Orochi Ultimate. They're adding even more characters to the mix, so I might have to pick it up if it comes to the US. By then though I may have had my fill since One Piece Pirate Warriors 2 is coming out on the 20th of August, which I'm unrealistically excited for.

Summer is Ending!

This summer was front-loaded with games and it seems that the back end is going to be pretty game heavy as well. Next week I'll be picking up the first true Wii-U release otherwise known as Pikmin 3. I hope for Nintendo's sake it's as good as they've been hyping it up to be. The Wii-U is already selling like a pile of poo though, so I'm sure the release of a unique first party game will do nothing but increase the consoles sales.

On the 6th Tales of Xillia will arrive at my door which is awesome, because I could use a solid JRPG. At the end of the month both Dive Kick and One Piece Pirate Warriors 2 will be on the PlayStation store, so look forward to hearing about the stupidly fun time I plan on having with both of those.

I'm getting hyped up just thinking about the coming month. If I start to think too far ahead though my brain might explode, because we've got GTA V and new consoles just around the corner! It's an exciting time!

Peace out.

     -Manny.

Game Time - June 2013

There's always a period after E3 where I'm super excited about the video game industry. Tons of new games are on their way and this time there are even new consoles. That excitement quickly wears off as the realization dawns on me that the games I'm excited for won't be coming out for four months to a year from E3. Without fail it happens every year.

Luckily this year the summer isn't a barren wasteland of games, like it is most other years. Well, I guess it might be in July, but June has been a pretty good month so far. Due to these releases my post E3 slump has been somewhat brighter than in previous years.

I had pre-ordered Remember Me, and Project X Zone a very long time ago. I'm still currently playing Project X Zone, and I've taken a break from Remember Me. It's not that I don't like the game it's just that I took a break and haven't really wanted to go back to it. The main reason for that is The Last of Us. I told myself I didn't want to play another zombie shooter, but the positive reviews swayed me. I picked it up at midnight don't regret it at all. While the reviews may have been a tad too positive compared to my experience it was still an excellent game.

I've also played a ludicrous amount of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but I have no idea how to distill my thoughts into words yet. I enjoy my virtual world so much, but I still have no idea why. Hopefully I can figure it out, or at least be able to profess my love in a sensible manner.

So without further ado, it's game time!

Remember Me

I really like cyberpunk worlds, so I was immediately interested when I first saw footage of Remember Me. It takes place in a future version of Paris where memories have been made into a commodity. People can share there memories with others, which is something I've always thought about doing in real life. The world is very cool and I enjoy exploring as much as I can. The game is fairly linear, so there isn't a whole lot of time to look around, but if you take the time to look around you'll be able to find out a whole lot more about the world.

The main character of the game is a woman named Nilin. She is what's known as a memory hunter, who ironically had her memory taken from her. I guess it makes sense for the protagonist to have problems with memory in a game about memories, but I'm still not a huge fan of amnesia as a plot device. In the beginning you escape from a terrible government facility in order to continue working for your old boss Edge. Edge is the leader of a revolutionary group and he seems to have a lot of faith in Nilin. He needs her steal some memories and take down hoards of enemies in hand to hand combat!

I hope you like doing combos!

Initial reviews of Remember Me were quite negative. They mainly cited the voice acting and combat as points of contention. I can understand the voice acting, because it's not exactly the best. It's especially annoying when the characters say things like "remember you soon" instead of see you soon. You know, because it's a game about memories, so you obviously must make reference to that as much as humanly possible. It can be a bit grading, but it's not game ruining.

Combat on the other hand I have absolutely no problem with. Sure, at first it seems a bit stiff. Once you get past that initial hurdle though it's really not that bad. Remember Me has a melee combat system that's very similar to the Arkham games (I guess most melee combat is these days). You equip various punches and kicks to make combos. In order to do so you're given a set of attacks called pressens. Each pressen is either a punch or a kick that has special properties. You then equip them in order to form combos. The attacks will always look the same, because the button combinations are pre-determined. The only thing you're changing are the attack properties.

Customizing combos actually matters quite a bit.

Once I got going I found it very easy to chain combos on enemies. I also found myself tinkering with the combos in order to get the most damage or health back in a single combo. It's actually quite gratifying once you get the hang of it. What starts to get annoying is that there are so many enemies, and that's all you do is run from one combat scenario to another. It gets kind of repetitive. That might be terrible in a 20 hour game, but according to my completion progress upon booting up the game it's only around 6 hours long. Sadly I haven't completed those few hours yet, but I'm going to go back soon. It's always nice to see new IP this late in the console cycle. It's a fun game and I don't regret the purchase.

The Last of Us

I tried as hard as I could to resist buying The Last of Us, but I couldn't do it. I caved and bought a third person shooter that revolves around zombie-like monsters. I say zombie-like, because the creatures in The Last of Us are not actually zombies. They're humans whose brains have been affected by crazy fungus spores. Most zombie or monster focused stories like this aren't really about the monsters/zombies anymore, they're about the people who are trying to survive. That's what makes The Last of Us so compelling. You play as Joel the hardened survivor who knows how to kill. He finds himself in the company of a young girl named Ellie. Much like Elizabeth and Booker in Bioshock Infinite the core of the game is the relationship between these two characters. The performances were motion captured, which makes a lot of the stuff that happens a lot more heavy hitting than it would have been otherwise. There were a few moments where I got teary eyed. One of the moments I''ll probably remember forever.

I don't want to give away a lot, because this game is something that I feel everyone who has a PS3 should experience for themselves. It's not the most groundbreaking story ever told, but it's definitely something that will stick with me for a long time. It's just depressing. Some of the things that happen in the world are so messed up that it's hard to believe. Despite that you'll want to push through to see what happens to Joel and Ellie next. At first I didn't see what all the fuss was about. The story took quite a bit to really get going, but once it got up to speed it just kept on trucking right to the ending. I guess the main thing slowing it down for me was the actual playing of the game.

You get to know Joel and Ellie very well over the course of the game.

The game play of The Last of Us is actually better than I would have expected. It focuses largely on stealth. You can go through the whole game choking both the infected and humans to death from behind. In fact, it's probably better to do that. To make it a bit easier to do you can throw bricks and bottles, which the enemies will react to, because shooting everyone in the face isn't viable. As is appropriate with any apocalyptic world your resources are limited. Bullets don't show up every three seconds, or even every time you kill an enemy with a gun. The combat scenarios were fun for a while, but I eventually saw them as road blocks to keep me from seeing the next awesome story sequence. It doesn't help that some of the infected can instantly kill you when they get all up on you. Eventually you can craft shivs to make it so you get a second chance at life, but it still really doesn't help very much.

The crafting system isn't very in-depth, but it's nice to have. You can craft shivs, health packs, and even Molotov cocktails from things you find in the environment. There is also a perk system where you can spend supplements on upgrades. They never make you a whole lot better than you currently are, but they do help incrementally to make combat more manageable. As I mentioned previously the game play is fine, it just seems to get in the way sometimes. It didn't help that I got stuck in the environment multiple times with no way to advance. Twice I was supposed to be given a button prompt to move on that just wouldn't show up, which really kills any sense of momentum. I forged ahead though and came away with an awesome gaming experience. This is definitely a game I think people should play.

Project X Zone

I remember watching every twenty minute trailer for Project X Zone before it was released in Japan. I had no idea what the hell was going on, but it looked insane. So many characters I know and love rendered as beautiful 2D sprites comboing the living hell out of a single enemy. While watching those trailers I told myself that there was absolutely no way it would leave the shores of Japan. Copyright is much different in Japan than it is in America. I thought that having a crossover between Sega, Namco, and Capcom make it here was impossible, especially after Namco X Capcom for the PS2 didn't make it over. Instead Namco Bandai made me eat my words by bringing Project X Zone to the US.

The game is now in English and I still have a very wavering grasp of what's going on in the game. Most crossover games like this have the characters either randomly transported to other worlds for some reason, or they all have amnesia and must work together to get back their memories. Project X Zone has the random transporting, but I'm over halfway through the game and still have no idea why it's happening. To make it even more confusing most of the characters seem to know each other for absolutely no reason. Why does everyone know that Pai from Virtua Fighter is a movie star? Why in god's name does Jin from Tekken know that Chun-Li is a cop? In the context of the game it seems that most of the characters are aware of each other despite the fact that they all exist in different worlds.

Complete and utter madness.

I haven't taken the time to research this, but I'm pretty sure that this is a direct sequel to the PS2 game Namco X Capcom. Mainly because, the two main characters from Namco X Capcom are in this game. It's entirely possible that the story is just terrible though, which is to be expected from this type of thing. Like I said I'm over halfway through the game and there still isn't a central enemy. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of enemies, but they aren't really cooperating and if they are the reasons why are not clear. In my opinion it would have been better if there wasn't a story.

So what is Project X Zone you're probably asking yourself. It's a strategy RPG. You move the characters on a grid and have them attack enemies. Where this differs from other SRPGs is that each unit it actually two characters. For example Chun-li shows up on the map, but in reality it's Chun-Li paired with Morrigan from Darkstalkers. When you choose to attack an enemy you are then put into a battle. If you've seen any footage of the game this is the part you would have seen. The enemy is on the left, while your team is on the right. In order to attack you have to push A by itself, or pair it with a direction. All of the attacks are shown for you on screen. To start each pair has three different attacks, and can attack three times. You can mash out the same attack three times, but if you use each different attack once then you get to attack once more.

Most battles look like this, but with 800,000 more enemies on screen.

What's cool is that the battles are actually very active. If you just mash out the attacks you're going to do very poorly. You want to keep your combo counter going up by keeping your enemy in the air. This means that you have to time your attacks to keep juggling the enemy. If you want to do critical hits you have to hit the enemy just before they hit the ground from your previous attack. It's much more engaging than your average SRPG. To add  in more fun there are solo characters you can send in to help out and if you're standing near another one of your units you can call them in for a single attack as well.

I love Project X Zone, but I also find it supremely frustrating. Since the story barely exists all I have to look forward to is the combat. The combat is fun, but only up to a certain point. At first the battles only take around a half hour to complete, but now they take me an hour or more. Battles start with a ton of enemies, but inevitably more enemies show up on subsequent turns. That would be fine, but sometimes there are 40 or 50 enemies to fight at a time. Once you think you've won a billion more enemies show up with an entirely new boss, because why the hell not? It gets super annoying. I've played for 23 hours already and I'm apparently just about halfway through the game. I'm all for long games, but at some point it has to stop. There's no reason for this game to go on for so long. I'm fighting the same bosses over and over again to reach a nonexistent goal. It's a good thing the combat is really addicting or there would be absolutely no reason for me to continue on.

What's Next?

I'm going to be real honest when I say I don't know what I'm going to write about for next month. There aren't really any games I want coming out. Dive Kick is the only thing. It's supposed to come out before EVO, but who knows when it's actually going to be released. I ordered the Japanes only Wii game Captain Rainbow as well, but you know it's in Japanese.

I bought every single one of the Mega Man Battle Network games for some reason too. So maybe that? I don't really know. It's summer and I'll do what I want.

Until next time.

     -Manny

E3 2013: Sony Press Conference

The future of the PlayStation

Sony didn't exactly do very well at the beginning of the current console generation. They had grand ideas that ended up falling quite short. They put a lot of stock into the cell processor, but it ended up making the console harder to develop for and much more expensive to produce. The $599 price reveal is quite an infamous moment in terms of E3 press conferences. That's all in the past though. A few months ago Sony announced the PS4 at a special event and talked about it's tech specs and showed a whole lot of video games. They started quite a buzz in the gaming community. People have been backing them recently. Especially after the announcement that the Xbox one would not support used games and would require an almost constant internet connection.

Sony stayed silent about their policies for used games and online connectivity until last night at their press conference. Sony pinpointed the weakness in Microsoft and struck with everything they had. In an honestly surprising move the PS4 will fully support used games. There is also no required online connection, so you can play your games offline all you want. When these two features of the console  were announced there was quite a bit of cheering from the crowd. During those cheers Jack Tretton started talking about PlayStation Plus and slipped in that you'll need it to play online multiplayer with the PS4. I'm actually glad that plus is required, because it means that maybe the online play won't totally suck on the PS4.

In another blow to Microsoft's body Sony announced that the PS4 will launch this holiday season for $399. The price seems crazy cheap compared to the Xbox One, but the One comes with Kinect while the PS4 does not come with the fancy new PlayStation Eye. The price point, being able to play used games, the fact that indie developers can self publish, and no necessary online connection are leading people to crown Sony the victor of this upcoming console generation already. I don't necessarily agree with that, but things do look very good for Sony right now.

Sony showed quite a few games at their conference as well. They live demoed Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (Which froze), Watch Dogs, and Destiny. All three look very good. I wasn't convinced on Assassin's Creed 4, but before the demo froze it looked awesome. I was surprised by how good Destiny looked as well. It may be a first person shooter, but it has RPG elements and I love me some RPG elements.

Sony also showed off quite a few trailers. These are just a few of them.

• Transistor
• Infamous: Second Son
• Drive Club
• Batman Arkham Origins
• The Last of Us
• Beyond Two Souls

They showed off tons of indie games that will be coming to PS4, which all seemed pretty cool. The trailers and gameplay demos got me really excited for what's coming during the next gen. None of it really surprised me though, except for two games I have yet to mention. There are few video games that will make me jump up out of my seat and yell with excitement. Sony showed two of those last night.

I have been waiting since 2006 for Final Fantasy Versus XIII to be released. At this point I was just looking for any new about it's existence. There were a few CG trailers and one gameplay trailer floating around. The last real news about the project was from 2010. That all changed last night. Sony showed a video of the game's producer Tetsuya Nomura telling fans he was busy, but they should enjoy the trailer for Versus XIII.

I lost my composure during the trailer. It was amazing. The CG scenes were beautiful, but the gameplay looked even cooler to me. The main character Noctis was jumping around cutting fools with his sword. His movement was super fast, which was aided by his teleportation. When the trailer ended it was revealed that the game had been changed to Final Fantasy XV and it would appear on the PS4. I thought that by now the prospect of this game wouldn't excite me anymore, but as a die hard Final Fantasy fan I was proven wrong.

On top of that ridiculous reveal they also decided to show a brief teaser for Kingdom Hearts 3. I guess Square Enix just wanted to let fans know that it's finally in development. While it may be Kingdom Hearts 3, it's actually the tenth game in the series. This will be the end of the trilogy and it should be a great game. 

Even though it was reveled today that both of these titles will also be released on the Xbox One as well, Sony still got the initial reveals. It takes a lot to make me freak out with excitement these days, but Final Fantasy XV did just that. Sony had a lot of great news at their conference and it makes me very excited to purchase the PS4. In fact I pre-ordered it from Amazon moments after the price was announced. Sony is certainly off to a better start this gen than they were last time around. Let's hope they can make good on what they've promised.

     -Manny

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

Game Time - May 2013

You know what? I don't have an introduction for this week. I played two older games and a newer PC release. I enjoyed all three. How much you ask? Well let's find out together. It's game time!

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Now that Ace Attorney 5 coverage has been picking up my urge to play more Ace Attorney has picked up as well. Last month I finally finished Apollo Justice, but it just wasn't enough to whet my appetite. In order to relieve my insatiable hunger for more Ace Attorney I picked up the final US release of the series Ace Attorney Investigations. It's slightly different from the normal Ace Attorney Formula, but only very slightly.

This isn't just your run of the mill Ace Attorney title. It's all about investigating crime scenes as prosecutor Miles Edgeworth. It may as well be called Ace Attorney: CSI Edition. I expected playing as a prosecutor to be far different than playing as a defense attorney, but sadly that is not the case. This is still essentially the same game it was before, except you never truly go into the courtroom. Somehow Edgeworth gets mixed up in a series of murders. Obviously as a big time prosecutor he must get to the bottom of what exactly transpired in each given scenario.

You can walk and run around small environments!

Yes, you do the exact same thing in the normal Ace Ace Attorney Games. You check out the scene, gather evidence, and talk to people. The main difference is that you get to walk around! I know, it's a mind blowing change that would lead you to believe that it adds to the game overall. Surprise, it doesn't. Even though you can walk around the crime scene you still aren't allowed to leave until you find everything you need to. The only benefit walking around conveys is that you can walk to other pieces of interest instead of navigating a menu, which is equally effective. Although I assume drawing out full sprites for every character takes much more work.

Edgeworth is a smart dude, so he can use logic. Examining things sometimes allows him to deduce things about the scene or crime at hand. These deductions are added to the brand new logic menu. In the logic menu you can fuse two pieces of logic alchemy like into a piece of evidence, or another piece of logic. It's not anything mind-blowing, but it is different.

Kay is great and I hope she's in Ace Attorney 5

It's cool to see Edgeworth in the side of the Ace Attorney franchise that we never see. However, I would have preferred something a little more different than the main series. It would have been a cool spin on everything if you actually did have to go into the courtroom as a prosecutor. Proving someone is guilty would actually be quite different than trying to prove their innocence, plus every person you defend as Phoenix or Apollo is innocent. Sadly this ends up being more of the same with a few minor changes.

Even though it's more of the same I still love it. It's nice to be able to learn more about Edgeworth and Gumshoe firsthand. The new characters they introduce are actually quite well done too. I really hope that Kay the lovable ninja/theif makes a guest appearance in Ace Attorney 5. The story is still quite good, although I don't think it's quite on par with the rest of the series. What sucks is that this game didn't sell well when it was released although I can kind of see why. Due to that fact, the second Ace Attorney Investigations may forever be a Japan only release.

Super Metroid

For years I've  heard about the greatness that is Super Metroid and now that it's been released on the Wii-U virtual console for a whopping 30 cents I've finally gotten around to playing it. At first I was afraid that it wouldn't live up to my expectations, because people really like to talk it up. Thankfully this is one of the times where the game actually lives up to the hype. It's one of the most atmospheric 2D adventure games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. It's easy to see how people look to this game and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night when they try to explain games of this ilk and their quality.

Super Metroid hasn't been all fun and games so far though, it has also been quite sobering. It's a common complaint that modern games hold the hand of the player a little too often. After playing a few hours of Super Metroid I can now say that modern games have made me soft. Games today are chock full of tutorials and hints to get you through difficult spots and let you know the game mechanics. This game is nothing like that though. Samaus is more or less dumped on planet Zebes and then you're left to your own devices. Sometimes upon picking up weapons and power-ups there will be instructions on how to use them, or what they do, but that's not always the case.

I love the title screen for this game.

You have to figure out where to go all on your own. There is nothing there to hold your hand. There are no magical bread crumb trails, or pop-up hints when you're taking too long. There were multiple times where I came to a complete stop, because I literally did not have what I needed to advance. I've had to backtrack on multiple occasions and gotten completely lost, even with a map. What's weird is that Super Metroid is a product of the era when I started playing games. It's not like I'm unaccustomed to games of this difficulty, it's just that I'm not used to having to figure things out all on my own anymore. I'm actually glad I'm having trouble finding exactly where to go and what to do. I actually enjoy banging my head against the game until I make progress. It's not like the game is impossible to figure out, it's just that it takes more than one look to figure out exactly what you need to do.

For fun I decided to hit up the Miiverse to see if anyone else was having the same type of experience that I was. People weren't exactly having a sobering epiphany about how modern games like to hold your hand and stroke your ego. Instead I saw countless posts about people getting frustrated, because they couldn't figure out what to do in any capacity. More often than not people were taking screenshots of where they were to ask for help. It's crazy to think that there is a whole new generation of gamers out there who might not like this type of game, because it doesn't spell everything out for you. Thankfully I still like figuring things out for myself, so I'm going to continue playing. Sometimes working to figure something out is more rewarding than getting it immediately on your first try.

Game Dev Tycoon

Many moons ago I bought my first android phone. At that time I entered the world of mobile gaming by purchasing Game Dev Story. As you may have surmised it was a game about game development. The goal of the game was to make the best video games you possibly could. In order to do so the game required you to hire and train employees in game making. They would all toil away by putting points into your game, which would then be reviewed and make you money or completely tank. The cycle would then continue until you either got bored, or lost all of your money. Most of the time I got bored, but that didn't stop me from buying Game Dev Tycoon for the PC this past week.

I know what you're thinking. Game Dev Tycoon sounds almost exactly like Game Dev Story. Guess what? You're right, they are almost the exact same game. In fact, they're so similar it surprises me that there is no type of legal action involved. While the games may be very similar I still find what Game Dev Tycoon has to offer appealing to a certain extent.

Get ready for a lot of bars and sliders.

You start off all by yourself making games in your garage. At first you can only develop games for the PC and G64, the cleverly renamed C64. You choose a platform, genre, and topic. In my case I always start by making Fantasy Rpgs for the G64. Once you choose what to make the development process starts for "real". Three different colored bars with sliders will appear. There will always be three bars, each one representing an area of focus. Sliding each bar will determine how much focus you put on that specific aspect of the game. Once finalized different colored bubbles will fly from your characters head. Design and Technology are what you want a lot of to make your game succeed. However, bugs and research will also be created. Once the game is finished you can push it out for release immediately or give yourself some time to fix the bugs. Shortly after release you will get four reviews from "famous" gaming publications. The reviews will dictate how well your game sells. After the review roundup it's time to make a new game and start the cycle all over again.

As your company makes games you'll gain money to put towards even better and new games. You'll eventually be able to research new technologies, design custom engines, hire employees, and market your games. New mechanics get rolled out at a regular pace to keep mix up the gameplay and keep it exciting. I use the word exciting liberally, because in reality this is a game about watching numbers count up and progress bars fill. There's something about it that's oddly satisfying to me though and I got pretty sucked in the first few times I played.

I always lose the game shortly after I make it to this office...

While the game is still enjoyable I kind of ruined it for myself. My first few play sessions I would make it up until the Super Nintendo era of gaming before my company would completely tank. The games my company was releasing were getting terrible reviews, even if they were technically better than the previous releases of the same type. After failing a couple of times I visited a wiki to discover what I was doing wrong. Apparently if the games you create aren't at least 20% better than the previous one of that type then they totally bomb. Knowing this totally broke any connection I had to the game, because now I can only think of the numbers. Yes the game is mostly just numbers anyways, but before it was masked by a sense of discovery.

Since I purchased the game I have received several emails from the developer. These emails seem to acknowledge the fact that the game can be pretty unforgiving at certain stages. They're planning to fix those issues in order to accommodate other play styles. Hopefully one of those play styles is mine. I'm going to wait until the new version of the game comes out before playing any more, because I really don't enjoy exploiting the system.

Get Hype For E3!

Now that we know a bunch about the PS4 and Xbox One it's time to start getting excited for E3. Since it's the dawn of a new console era it's sure to be exciting. We'll finally get to see a whole bunch of next generation titles, which are hopefully as awesome as I'd like them to be. Maybe we'll even catch a glimpse of the ever elusive Final Fantasy Versus XII, but only time will tell. I'll probably have a whole bunch of thoughts and opinions about E3 as it's happening, so check back in a few weeks to see all that good stuff.

In terms of games June is actually going to be pretty big. I thought that the summer dry spell had already started, but turns out that was just a brief respite from my extreme spending habits. Even though I've been hearing nothing but negativity surrounding the futuristic Remember Me. I still decided to pre-order it anyways. Hopefully that's good. Then you've got Animal Crossing New Leaf and Project X Zone for the 3ds, which I'm super excited for.

Maybe I'll even break down and buy The Last of Us, because every time I see a new trailer for it my brain tells me that I need it. Do I really need another zombie game though? I don't know, but stay tuned to Game Time to find out.

100 Hours and Counting: A Journey Into Monster Hunter

For years the question "Why do people like Monster Hunter?" has burned in my mind. There's a certain stigma associated with the franchise in America. It's become well known for rough camera control, a steep learning curve, and ridiculous amounts of grinding. Yet, despite all that the series is somehow a system seller in Japan. I don't claim to know how Monster Hunter is truly received there, but the general consensus seems to be that people go crazy for the game over there. I'm inclined to agree, just because the PSP sold far too much in Japan for that not to be the case. In some cases it seems that people have a Monster Hunter addiction. Hell, I've read articles about Japanese pop culture icons having played hundreds of hours of the series.

Why do people go crazy for it? I tried to find out the answer a few years ago on the PSP, but I just couldn't do it. Camera control on the PSP was what killed it for me almost immediately. Hacking away at a monster for 30 minutes seemed more like a battle with the camera than it did with the monster. I ended up playing for a few hours before stopping in frustration. Realistically the camera wasn't the only thing that stopped me from playing. The fact is that I didn't understand anything that was going on and I wasn't having fun. The game took absolutely no steps to educate me on how to do anything. That's not exactly how I like my video games. It didn't click with me, so I dropped it.

I really don't like playing what should be dual-analog games on the PSP

Despite my distaste for the PSP entry I played years ago, something about Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate for the Wii-U and 3DS piqued my interest. The question of why people go crazy for this franchise reared up in my head again and I just had to know. I decided before even playing the demo that I was going to purchase the game for the Wii-U and give it a shot. Partially to answer my question, but mostly to have any new game to play on my dusty Wii-U. I ordered it on Amazon and then decided to play the demo. They let you choose one of the 16 different weapons to fight either an easy fight, or a hard fight. Going through the weapons I ended up choosing dual-blades and the easy monster called Lagombi. For the next 40 minutes I was locked in a struggle with a crazy ice throwing rabbit-koala. When the creature finally died the demo ended and I didn't know how to react for a minute or two. In fact, I was kind of scared. It's difficult to explain, but during the epic struggle I felt a rush that I don't feel often when playing games.

Over the course of the fight I learned the patterns of the Lagombi. I knew when it was going to slide on its belly. I knew when it was going to throw chunks of ice at me and I knew when to dodge. Each dodge allowed me to sink the dual-blades into the monster and cause some damage. The struggle was legitimately exciting, so I needed to let all my emotions sink in during the aftermath. That's when it hit me. I had felt a little bit of why people like Monster Hunter, which made me immediately both excited and terrified. What if Monster Hunter sucked me in? Would I finally understand? I didn't know, but I desperately wanted to find out. Knowing that the game had a poor tutorial I began to look up beginner guides for the series to prepare.

This Lagombi gave me my first taste of why I like Monster Hunter. 

When the game released officially I started out by playing a few hours each night. It's weird, because for the first ten or so hours I was kind of just fumbling along. I wasn't having fun, but I didn't dislike what I was doing either. One thing that helped were the guides I had looked up in the weeks prior to playing the retail release. Specifically I watched the podcast called My Fair Hunter. It's a weekly video series created by a Monster Hunter "expert" (Roy) in which he teaches his trainee (Sarah) how to play Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii from the ground up. I learned a lot of the games basics from them and I think that's the reason I ended up sticking with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. It's not the exact same game that they're playing on the podcast, but it's fairly close. The things I learned from them made it so that I didn't feel completely lost. It definitely helped soften the learning curve. 

I can't pinpoint exactly when it was, but somewhere after the ten hour mark I truly started to enjoy playing the game. A few of my friends bought the game for 3DS and we began to play quite often. As of writing this post I have put around 180 hours into the game and I still play at least one mission on a daily basis.

What's the appeal?

Now that I know I'm into Monster Hunter I've been trying to think about why that is. In my mind there are many parallels between this series and Phantasy Star Online, which I played for a very long time. You get into groups of up to four people to go the same areas over and over to get items you want or need. That sounds super reductive, but it's true. To me they're both partially about the loot grind and character advancement. They also both have incredibly low drop rates on certain items, which can be infuriating. That's where the similarities end though.

Monster Hunter is much more about skill than most other games I've played in recent memory. Instead of leveling your character up and having them gain strength they're always going to stay the same. What's going to change are your weapons and armor. Killing or capturing monsters allows you to get parts from them in order to craft new and exciting gear. The gear will make it so you can survive a bit longer and hit a bit harder, but you're eventually going to have to get better at the game. What's great is that the game gives players a lot of options in terms of how they want to play. There are 16 weapon types all of which play very differently. Animation priority can be a turn off for a lot of people though, because committing to every single attack isn't always fun. However, there are a few weapons like the dual blades though that move much faster.

Don't like animation priority? You should try the dual blades.

Each monster can be likened to a boss encounter. They behave a certain way, which you'll eventually learn. This is cool, because it makes every single mission an epic battle. You're going to get hurt and knocked down. You might even die a few times. To me that's what makes it all so exciting. Most games are all about making you feel like a badass at all times, while Monster Hunter goes out of it's way to show you that you're not. It's very much about delayed gratification. There are no health bars on the monsters. You just have to know when they're ready for capture or about to die. You have to learn a monster's patterns in order to do well against it. Then you'll most likely have to fight it a ton more in order to get the items you need from it.

I guess you could say it's the thrill of the hunt that draws me in. I like going into a fight with no idea what's going on and just observing to see what I'm up against. It's a great feeling when you realize a few fights after that initial observation that you're crushing the monster you found so difficult earlier. That feeling has kept me going for 180 hours now, which is far more than I play most games before getting tired of them.

Hitting enemies with a great sword is very satisfying. 

What's upsetting is that the game is so obtuse. The beginning of the game doesn't explain nearly enough to get you prepared for the later hunts in the game. You'll be sent to gather a bunch of resources and shortly after fight your first big monster. The first monster is easy, but the difficulty spikes quite a bit after that. I'd recommend doing what I did and looking up beginners guides or getting a posse of friends together to help you out.

I definitely know that this type of game isn't for everyone, but I wanted to share my experiences and insight into what the deal is with the series. It has eluded me for so long but now it has sunken its addictive claws into me. There aren't very many franchises like Monster Hunter out there and I'm glad I gave it a chance.

     -Manny