Game Time ID: PlayStation 4

On Friday when I first got my PlayStation 4 I felt like I had to put something up right away. I rushed it out in excitement of my shiny new console. Now that it's been a few days I feel like I can say a lot more about the system as a whole. I've played many hours of Assassin's Creed 4, Lego Marvel Heroes, Need for Speed Rivals, Resogun, and Warframe. All of them have been quite fun. Since all of these games are either for PC and/or the previous generation of consoles the most interesting part about the system right now is the operating system.

I mentioned in my quick impressions that I liked the UI. I still do to a certain extent, but not as much as before. In an attempt to make everything much more simple the operating system lost a lot of basic functionality. For example, every time you put in a game it's added to a list of recently used applications. They show up in a row as fairly large squares. As far as I can tell there's no way to get rid of any of them, and there's absolutely no way to sort them. Right now it's not that big of a deal. but when there are a bunch of downloadable titles it will be a huge pain to find what you're looking for. At least on the PS3 you could sort things into folders. Hopefully some type of sort option will be patched in at a later date.

It doesn't seem like it will be too hard for Sony to patch things in either, which is nice. One major complaint I had has already been fixed. For some reason games won't patch until the first time you open them. As soon as they boot the patch is pulled, which is kind of dumb since you can't play anything online unless the game is up to date. This means that you have to quit the game to install the patch and then boot back into it. This is still an issue. What Sony did fix however is the fact that there was no way to differentiate between a game and a patch. I downloaded Resogun from the store. That was listed in my downloads as Resogun. Then it tried to patch and the patch was in the downloads also as Resogun. Last night Sony pushed the firmware update 1.51, which now lists patches you've downloaded as game updates. Not a huge change on it's own, but it's good to see that they can change things if they need to.

Friends

The PlayStation 3 will only let you have 100 friends on your list. The PlayStation 4 on the other hand will let you have 2,000. Why you would want to do that I don't know, but you totally can. I only have around 30 friends on my list right now and the list is super annoying, so I can only imagine how it must be for people who have more than that. Friends are split into 2 categories of Online and All. Online obviously shows you everyone who's online and what they're playing. All shows every one of your friends. What sucks is that both lists are in alphabetical order and there's absolutely no way to sort them. In the end it's almost easier to search for the username you're looking for with the new search function. I'm sure they'll patch this in the future to change how all of this is displayed.

When you first log in with your PSN account you'll be asked if you want to integrate it with Facebook. If you choose to, which I did, it pulls your real name and profile picture. I chose not to use my profile picture, because I like my PSN icon of Cody from Street Fighter just fine. It is super weird to see my real name all over everything though. Your friends won't be able to see your real name unless you send them a name request. This doesn't really have any bearing on anything, but it's an interesting feature.

What's cool is that you can see what game your friends are playing and what system they're playing it on. Even if they're playing on Vita you can see what they're playing, which is something that you can't see on the PS3. The same profile features from the PS3 carry over as well, so you can see their brief introduction and what languages they speak. Their level and how many trophies they have are displayed prominently on their profile page and you can easily compare if you want to.

Messaging is a little better now, because you can send voice messages. As you may have heard there is also party chat now. These are both things that the Xbox 360 had, so it's nice that the PS4 is at least on par with that now. I chatted it up with a friend today while playing Need for Speed Rivals. It worked quite well. I used the pack in mic, which sounds a whole lot better than I thought it would. I might be able to get away with using it for a while longer.

Trophies

Trophies are now a staple of the PlayStation, so it's good to see that they're integrated into the system and not tacked on and poorly implemented like on the PS3. Once you log in to PSN all of your trophy data comes right down. On a new PS3 I had to wait 20 minutes or more for my trophies to pull down since I have almost 4,000 now. This makes viewing trophies a much more pleasant experience. Apparently it's not too bad on the Vita either, but I don't have one of those yet.

When I first heard that the trophies still had to sync all the time I got a little worried. It's not nearly as bad as I thought, but it's still kind of annoying. Sure it takes hardly any time at all to sync them up, but there's no reason that I should have to go to my trophies in order for them to do so. Achievements show up automatically on the Xbox, so it's a little weird that people can't see what I've gotten since I last synced my trophies manually. Trophies are supposed to sync automatically like they did with PlayStation Plus on the PS3, but they aren't for me. I'm probably supposed to leave the system in standby mode, but I don't.

There are two new things with trophies that I think are really cool. The first is that if you view a game it separates out the trophies from the main game and each different DLC set. This doesn't really matter, but it's cool to see regardless. What's interesting is that all of my PS3 games are separated out in this way and some even have custom art to go along with the DLC packs. It's weird that these games all have the same treatment, but it's only when being viewed on the PS4.

The other feature is actually super awesome. When you view a trophy list there is a rarity next to each and every trophy, which ranges from common to ultra rare. It takes into account how many people have played the game and have gotten that trophy. It even shows what percentage of that games players got that trophy, which is pretty neat. It adds a little more depth to a system that I care less and less about with each passing day.

Internet/Store

I'm happy to report that the PlayStation store doesn't run like garbage on the PS4. As I mentioned in my quick impressions it's the exact same store as the PS3 had with a lot less on it. As the PS4 gets more games I'm sure they'll do away with the huge advertisement like panels in favor of something that's a little less frustrating to navigate just like on the PS3 store. That part doesn't even really matter though, because the download speeds don't totally suck! I was able to download Resogun which is over a GB in a little under ten minutes. Game patches took hardly any time to download as well.

What sucks is the way the PS4 handles downloads. If you're downloading multiple things at once they don't queue up and instead all download at the same exact time. What's worse is that you can't pause the downloads, or at least there was no option that I could find. It's crazy, because the PS3 both allowed you to pause downloads and it only did one at a time. I guess that's the trade-off for reasonable download speeds.

I'm also happy to report that I'm not having stupid connection issues when playing games online either. With the PS3 I couldn't connect with my friends 90% of the time even though I have a NAT 2 connection. I still have hard times finding matches in any online PS3 game as well. With the PS4 I had absolutely no problem finding games and connecting with other players in Assassin's Creed, Warframe, and Need for Speed Rivals. Maybe this means I won't have to try and mess around with my connection every single time I want to play a game with a friend.

Sharing

In the past few years recording video games with commentary has become a big deal. The same goes for streaming video games out live as they're being played. Both Sony and Microsoft realized this and now the PS4 and Xbox One have built in streaming. I myself have wanted to get into the world of streaming and recording video games, but it's not exactly the easiest thing to do. My previous laptop wasn't exactly a powerhouse, so it wouldn't have been able to do it very well.

As of right now I'm very disappointed with the PS4's sharing features. Yes they make it very easy to do things that previously weren't, but it could be a lot better off the bat. Some of the things that aren't included make it feel rushed out, which it probably was. The Xbox One won't have it's streaming until 2014. Perhaps the PS4 should have been the same way.

It is very easy to start up a stream. When you push the share button you get three options, which are upload video clip, upload screenshot, and broadcast gameplay. Hitting boradcast will prompt you  to stream on Twitch or Ustream and then you're pretty much ready to go. The quality is relatively high and you can even show some of the chat at the bottom. What makes me upset about it is that you can't archive broadcasts yet, so everything you do will disappear into the ether. This wasn't even apparent until I looked it up and found out on Twitch itself. Archiving will never be available on Ustream. It's kind of weird that this stuff would be omitted at launch. It's even weirder that they'd never say anything about it. Maybe they did, but if so, I never heard about it.

The ability to take an in game screenshot is cool too, but the resolution is so low it's not really worth it. Even then you can only upload it to Twitter or share it on Facebook. Hopefully in the future you can upload the images to Flickr or even Instagram. You know, an image hosting site.

Gameplay videos are also interesting in theory, but right now I have no interest in making them. The system will always record up to 15 minutes of your gameplay, so if you see something awesome you can hit record and grab it. This is good if you're just trying to show off a glitch or a cool sequence of gameplay. What's really lame is that it doesn't pick up any microphone inputs so I can't even talk over videos of my gameplay. If I wanted to do that it would be the most convoluted process ever. First I'd have to upload the video to Facebook, then I'd have to find a way to rip the video from Facebook. Following that I'd have to record my voice and re-encode the video. Finally I would have to re-upload it for everyone to hear. I don't really want to go through all that so I'm just going to wait until archiving is available.

This feature has so much potential and I was looking forward to it so much. That's the reason why I sound so angry about the whole thing. You can't even upload videos to YouTube! What kind of video sharing service can't upload to YouTube! These are all things that I'm sure will be fixed in the future, but right now it's just frustrating.

The Newest Black Box

I don't really like the way the PlayStation 4 itself is shaped. Sure it's flat so I can set things on top of it, but why couldn't it have just been a literal box. Instead it's slanted in the front and back. The slanted front is fine, but the back makes it hard to find where you need to jam all of your cables. Also for some reason the top left of the console is made of that stupid glossy plastic that gets super dirty. I don't get why companies insist on putting that stuff on devices that people are going to touch a lot. With time I'm sure I'll get used to it, but as of right now I like the look of the PS3 a whole lot more. Specifically the slim. The original fat PS3 was a beast, and the new cheap PS3 looks like garbage.

The buttons on the front kind of bother me as well. They're both super tiny and at first I didn't even realize they were buttons at all. Above the disc slot is a super thin power button and below it there's a super thin eject button. They're barely recognizable as buttons unless you're looking for them. The good thing is that theoretically you'd only need to use the power button the first time you turn on the console. After that you could use the controller to turn the system on and off and eject the discs from the system level menu.

While the box itself hasn't impressed me all that much outside of it's internal hardware I've absolutely fallen in love with the DualShock 4. Yes, it looks like a weird version of the DualShock 3, but it's so much more. Almost everything about it is better with the exception of the d-pad. As of right now it seems like the D-pad is worse, because it doesn't give me any feedback on my movement. It barely moves at all. I'll need a fighting game to qualify that statement though. Overall though the whole thing is incredibly comfortable. It has grips on the bottom of both sides and the analog sticks have an indentation to rest your thumbs. The triggers feel excellent compared to the awful ones that were on the Dualshock 3. Perhaps now shooters will use the same controls on both the Xbox and PlayStation.

It's odd to have a touch pad in the center of the controller. It might not be as weird when games utilize it more though. In Assassin's Creed you can use it to navigate the map, but it works super poorly. There's no way to know where your finger is on the pad, so I kept sliding off of it. On top of that the movement speed and accuracy were both much worse than if I was using a controller. That's just a product of the game itself though, so hopefully in the future games will put it to better use.

Greatness is Here

Upon re-reading this post I sound very angry about the PS4, which was not my intent. I'm just being overly critical, because this is a new console generation. When it can't do some of the basic things a PS3 can, or things that were promised it's more than a little frustrating. The sleep mode feature they talked up so much isn't in the system yet, but that's one of the first things they announced. Yes, most of the things I have issues with will be fixed, but that time isn't here yet.

The PlayStation 4 as a gaming machine is excellent. I can put games in, they play, and they look excellent. I can't wait until games like InFamous come out in March so I can see the system at its full power.

The next generation of gaming is finally here and it's very exciting. It's just going to take it a while to get off the ground. With the Xbox One launching this coming Friday I hope it lights a fire under Sony's ass. With any luck we'll be seeing many firmware updates in the months ahead.

March will probably be when these systems finally take off and show us what they can really do. The Xbox One will be getting Titanfall. Both systems will be seeing Destiny in that time frame, and the PS4 will be touting InFamous Second Son. Those are the first true next gen games and I'm super excited to play them.

     -Manny

Quick PS4 Impressions and Thoughts

I received my PlayStation 4 earlier today. I'm busy playing it at the moment, but I thought that I'd share a few things.

The first is that I will probably not be posting any videos of myself playing games any time soon. Turns out that Twitch archiving is something that's going to be patched in. On top of that I can't even record myself talking over 15 minute chunks of gameplay to upload, because the headphone jack on my controller doesn't work right. It will only recognize anything if it's pretty much hanging precariously out of the controller, which totally sucks. I would just exchange the console normally, but since it's from Amazon I can't really do that. It doesn't help that I spend a fortune on games, so I can't really justify spending another $60 on a fully functioning controller at this time.

Edit as of 12:40 AM 11-16-13: Turns out I just suck at life. I had to shove the cord into the jack as hard as I could until I heard a pop. Somehow it wasn't in all the way on any of the headphones I tried. So maybe now I can actually post some videos haha.

Luckily, that's the only thing I have to bitch about here. Everything else has been great. People were bummed to find out that you still need to sync trophies, but it goes super fast and you don't even notice when the console is syncing everything. In fact, everything about the console is very seamless. I did manage to stream to Twitch while trying to get my mic to work. It came through in good quality, so I'm pumped for when I get a working controller and they patch in archiving.

Part of what makes everything seem so quick and seamless is the fact that the UI doesn't totally suck anymore. Everything is categorized so most things are fairly easy to find. Messages, trophies, and everything friend related are right at the surface level. The one thing I haven't gotten a chance to mess with yet is party chat, because of my stupid controller.

Going to the XMB in a PS3 game will often send everything to a grinding halt. That is not the case with the PS4. When you push the PlayStation button you can access everything at the system level and go right back into the game with absolutely no issue. I paused Assassin's Creed 4, went to the PlayStation Store to download Resogun, changed my router settings, and was able to get right back into the game as if I had never left it. It's awesome and it'll be even cooler when they add in the sleep feature.

Everyone can rejoice, because the PlayStation Store doesn't run like total garbage on the PS4. In fact it's the exact same as the PS3 store, which means they were just testing it out before. What does suck right now is navigating the store. There isn't much out yet, so everything seems like a gigantic banner ad, which makes scrolling through everything kind of annoying.

So far I've played a bunch of Assassin's Creed IV, which is incredible. I don't know if the PS3 and 360 versions are super incredible looking, or if the PS4 version has some serious graphical improvements. Everything about it looks beautiful. The rain in the opening scene blew my mind! I also played some Resogun, which was pretty cool as well. At the end of a level everything blows up into thousands of tiny particles, which would have crippled the old consoles.

Oh yeah, the controller itself is very comfortable. It feels great. The triggers are a huge improvement over the Dualshock 3. What's going to take getting used to is the fact that there are no start and select buttons. Instead it's the share and options buttons separated by a rather large touch-pad that doesn't do a lot.

I'm pretty into this thing so far. As I become less infatuated with playing it every waking moment I'll be sure to post more!

     -Manny

Game Time - October 2013

October was just about as awesome as I expected it to be. That is the main reason why it's now November 5th and I'm writing the October edition of game time. I've been pretty late on these the past few months, but that's a good thing. I've been busy playing awesome games.

In terms of awesome games this month was a doozy. On the 8th I picked up Disgaea D2 in store, because I hadn't pre-ordered it yet. For some reason I thought it was coming out at the end of the month, which was when I had planned on making time to play it. Due to my miscalculation I haven't played as much of it as I would have liked. I'm a solid 8 or so hours in and so far it hasn't grabbed me as much as I was hoping it would have. However, there's still plenty of time for that to happen.

The real reason I didn't play much Disgaea is because Pokemon X and Y came out a short four days later. In order to play as much Pokemon as humanly possible I requested off from work on the 12th and 13th. In those two days I played over 24 hours worth of Pokemon X. It was awesome, and the game continues to be awesome after 78 hours of play. I've still got a lot to do and I don't see myself stopping any time soon.

On the 24th the 5th game in the Ace Attorney franchise was released as a downloadable only title on the 3DS. I still wish it would have been a full retail release, but I understand that the franchise hasn't exactly had the most stellar sales in the west. Hopefully this game makes up for that and all future games in the series are localized. I'm up to the 5th and final court case in the game and shit's getting very real. I'll probably end up finishing it tonight or tomorrow. All I know is that Phoenix Wright made his return to the courtroom well worth my time.

I have so much to say about these games, so I better get into it. It's game time!

Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness

At some time in my high school career I picked up a copy of Disgaea 2 not really knowing what it was. I played through the first few chapters just as I would any strategy RPG. I still remember the map where everything changed for me. It was in a swamp and for some reason I had to fight Etna. She was level 1,000 or higher and my characters were barely 20. I was decimated, but found out I was supposed to be. It became my new goal to get strong enough to beat her. Little did I know that I would be able to get my characters to level 9,999 multiple times through insane level grinding with exponential experience. I played the living hell out of Disgaea 2 and from that point on I was hooked. Eventually I went back and played the first game, and since then I have played and been horribly addicted to each new iteration.

After going back and playing Disgaea 1 it became my favorite game in the franchise. For some reason I really like the main character Laharl, even though he's an egocentric whiner. Perhaps it's his lack of a shirt and the bad-ass laser sword he uses that make me like him so much. He ends up being my most used character in every game despite not being heavily involved in any of the main stories aside from the original game. With Disgaea D2 he makes his triumphant return as the main character.

Laharl turns into a lady during D2. I really like the character design!

I still love Laharl, but D2 has made me realize how little I like Etna and Flonne. There are only so many times you can joke about not having any boobs before it becomes upsetting. I don't want to be mean, but Flonne is too dumb for me to handle. I realize she's an angel who was kicked out of heaven and she's super innocent and naive, but it's just annoying. I didn't like the part she played in Disgaea 4's story either. In fact, I think she detracted from the overall feel of that story. This is what bugs me about D2 the most. It's a direct sequel to the story of the original game, so it focuses on the original three main characters. In theory that would be awesome, but for some reason the only other story character you get is a little girl who claims to be Laharl's sister. I don't like her at all either, so I'm stuck using the generic characters, Laharl, and the three story characters I find to be annoying. Once I get to the post game I can unlock the characters I liked from Disgaea 4, but I feel like that's a long way to go with a lackluster set of characters.

The story seems weak, which is putting me off a bit. It's a shame though, because everything else seems so well done. It eases you into the combat and teaches you a lot better than previous iterations of the franchise did. I want to beat the game so I can get sucked into the endless grinding and loot progression that I so desperately crave. Hopefully I can get past the characters I don't like and focus on how awesome Laharl is to get me through the game. Now that I'm winding down on Ace Attorney I should be able to play, or at least try to play a bit more.

Ace Attorney 5: Dual Destinies

I don't care what anyone says; Apollo Justice was a great game. Sure, he may not be Phoenix Wright, but that's okay. The original Ace Attorney trilogy ended in such a way that I didn't mind that Apollo had taken his place as the main character. With that said I'm glad that Phoenix is back as a playable character and back in the spotlight. Even though this time he's sharing his spotlight with Apollo and the fresh out of law school Athena Cykes.

Ace Attorney 5 plays just like the previous entries in the series. It's essentially a visual novel, but at certain points you'll need to explore crime scenes for evidence and present said evidence in court at the right time. What's nice is that everything is easier this time. When searching for evidence you control a cursor shaped like a hand pointing with it's index finger. When an area can be investigated a circle will appear over the index finger. To make things easier on the player the circle will turn into an X if you've already searched that area or object. It makes the investigations less frustrating, because you can easily see if you're missing anything. In a similar vane you can travel anywhere at any time. In the previous games you could only move to certain places if you were close to that place, which was terribly annoying. You'd have to backtrack through several screens for no reason whatsoever.

Look at how badass Apollo looks!

All of the character models are now full fledged 3D. You can see Phoenix yelling objection as a glorious 3D model instead of his regular old 2D sprite. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it looks really good and allows for a much wider range of motion. It's only really noticeable with the 3D turned on though. For some reason without it everything looks very flat. Without it the characters look painted on the background. With the 3D on everything looks like it was much more depth. Each background has several layers, and certain objects are accentuated. It reminds me of how I thought Kingdom Hearts 3DS had better graphics with the 3D on. It probably isn't the case, but it sure looks a lot better to me.

If the addition of 3D models isn't enough for you then perhaps you might enjoy some anime cutscenes. They're interspersed throughout the game and add to the story in a way that wasn't previously possible. The part that cuts the anime down for me a bit is the fact that's it's voice acted. It's not exactly the best voice work that I've ever heard. What makes it worse is that it's at odds with the rest of the game, which isn't voice acted at all. They could have easily gotten away with having no voice acting, because the scenes mostly show actions as opposed to conversations. The actors aren't even necessarily bad, they just don't fit the characters very well in my opinion. Since there have been 4 previous games in the franchise where the only spoken words were hold it, take that, and objection the voiced scenes are generally off-putting.

Witness Phoenix in all his 3D majesty!

The good news is that in regular Ace Attorney fashion the new characters are very well done. Athena Cykes is a brand new lawyer that Phoenix hired. I'm in the final case now and I still don't know exactly what her deal is, but she's an interesting character so far. She's easily excitable, but knows when she has to get serious. Just as Phoenix has his magatama, and Apollo has his magic bracelet, Athena has a robotic talking necklace named Widget. Widget will say what Athena is thinking, but he also allows her to sense discord in people's emotions. In the court room this adds a brand new way to cross examine. Occasionally she will sense discord and launch into an emotion detection sequence. As the witness speaks there are four emotions that they can be feeling. You must figure out what emotion doesn't fit with the testimony in order to bring out the truth and enact justice.

As is common with each game there is also a new prosecutor. Prosecutor Blackquill is a prison inmate who for some reason is allowed to work in a court of law. He was convicted of murder seven years prior to Ace Attorney 5. I have yet to find out what he was convicted for, but I'm super pumped to find out. He's generally very calm and collected, but becomes angry when he feels like his time is being wasted. Like the other prosecutors he is fairly hostile towards any opposing lawyer. He often sicks his pet bird on people, and throws knives across the court room. You know, things that are totally legal. He's a great opponent, because it seems that he believes in justice as opposed to only caring about a guilty verdict.

The anime scenes would be so much better without the voice acting.

As I mentioned previously I have just started the final case and I can't wait to see what happens. In the beginning though I wasn't very interested in the story. The first case failed to grab me, but it's importance isn't clear until the third case. I can't tell if it's the way this game is written, or if I'm just not used to the logic of the series anymore, but I keep finding myself not knowing what to do. Generally the series has it's own internal logic, but there have been numerous occasions when  I just have no idea what evidence I'm supposed to present in court. I've found myself getting much more frustrated than I did in previous titles despite the fact that everything is much more streamlined. Part of that may have been due to the fact that the story hadn't picked up yet. So while the experience has been frustrating it's been great to see Phoenix take up being a lawyer again after his supporting role in Apollo Justice. Overall it feels like an Ace Attorney game that's super streamlined, but slightly more frustrating than it used to be.

Pokemon X

Pokemon is and always has been one of my favorite franchises. Even though it doesn't change a whole lot with each iteration, it changes just enough to keep me coming back for more. This time Game Freak changed much more than usual and the result is amazing, which makes this the best generation of Pokemon yet.

To really shake things up Game Freak added in a whole new type. Dragon Pokemon are generally known to be overpowered. They are almost always very strong and have few weaknesses. In order to combat that Fairy type was added in order to take Dragon type down a few notches, because as we all know faeries are a dragon's only true weakness. What's insane is that fairy Pokemon are totally immune to Dragon moves. This addition might sound like a small thing, but it totally changes the entire basis of Pokemon battles. It's going to shake up competitive battling in a major way. I use a fairy Pokemon on my team and it's pretty awesome.

Sylveon is my favorite fairy Pokemon. It's a beastly special defense tank.

As if adding a whole new type wasn't enough Mega evolution is now a thing. Certain Pokemon can now mega evolve by holding a special stone. For example Tyranitar can turn into mega Tyranitar when holding Tyranitarite. When a Pokemon mega evolves it gets better stats and in some cases new typing, and a new ability. There are only around 20 Pokemon that can mega evolve, which means that a lot of people are going to start using those Pokemon. You're only allowed to have one Pokemon go Mega in a battle, so you can't just run a team of all super powered megas and steamroll everyone.

The most mind blowing change in X and Y is that everything is fully polygonal. All the models in the game are 3D and it's incredible. The overworld and characters don't look like anything special, but battles are amazing. The detail in animation of every single Pokemon and attack are unmatched! Since every main line Pokemon game prior to this has been fully sprite based this is a big change and a large step forward for the series. The only tradeoff is that the frame rate doesn't always hold up in battle, especially if you utilize the 3D of the 3DS. More often than not if you have the 3D turned on in battles the frame rate will drop by half during each attack animation. It's disappointing, because it all looks so good! The models still look good though, so it's just as nice to see the models without the 3D cranked all the way up.

The Pokemon models look very good for being on the 3DS.

Everything seems to happen faster in X and Y as well. You can immediately run, which is normally an ability you have to earn. Then after the first gym you gain access to the roller blades, which almost double your movement speed. Battle text scrolls faster by default as well making battles move quicker. It seems to me that leveling up your Pokemon takes less time too. For some reason you still gain Exp even if you capture a wild Pokemon now. The main reason leveling is faster though is due to the Exp. Share. While this has been an item in every single game it now shares the experience between every Pokemon in your party as opposed to just one. To make it even more mind blowing it's not even an item that a Pokemon has to hold anymore. Instead it's a key item that you can turn on or off at your discretion.

All around it seems that the series is trying to become more accessible. You get right into the game much faster than you did before, and it's a whole lot easier to level up and move around. Even the previously intense meta-game of your Pokemon's stats has been made easier. I don't want to get into the intricacies of EVs and IVs here, but I will say that they're now both easier to control. EVs have been completely trivialized, because now you can just play a soccer-like minigame for an hour or so completely max out the EVs you need on a single Pokemon. Breeding for IVs used to be overly complicated and take a good amount of luck, but I was able to breed a Pokemon with perfect stats in just a matter of hours. Sure, I got fairly lucky, but it's still way easier to do now. This all means that more people can get into Pokemon now, and people who previously found the competitive aspect too daunting can now get into it much more easily. This will be the first generation where I have a competitively viable team to use online.

Competitive battles might be much more prominent this generation.

Many people complained that there were only 70 brand new Pokemon, when there has been at least 100 per generation previously. I was upset at first too, especially since most of the designs are kind of poor. Now that I've played the game I no longer have any complaints. With less Pokemon it was much easier for Game Freak to add in all kinds of new features and make the Pokemon we all know and love into something much better than it was before.

I've been playing Pokemon since the original games came out over a decade ago and I've liked each and every iteration of the franchise since then. I can say without a doubt that this generation is the peak of the entire series. Game Freak has hit an all new high and I hope that they can top it with the next iteration. People complain that these games are too similar every year and for the first time this entry is actually very different. I love Pokemon so much. It's one of my favorite franchises and it makes me so happy that it's still so awesome after all these years.

A New Age is Dawning

This console cycle is coming to an end. On November 15th the PS4 will be here and with it an all new era of gaming will begin. While there may not be many exclusive games coming out for the thing it's still very important. The week after the Xbox One will be out and then we're truly into the next generation of console gaming.

I pre-ordered the PS4 and it will be at my door on the 15th. Since I can no longer get Watch Dogs until June of 2014 I am going to have to settle for Assassin's Creed 4 instead. I'll probably type up a whole bunch of stuff about the PS4 as I use it. Also expect me to post some videos of myself playing video games over the next few months. The PS4 allows for direct streaming to Twitch, which I can't wait to try out.

The next edition of Game Time will take place in an entirely new era of gaming!

     -Manny

Game Time ID: Grand Theft Auto V

Note: It took me so long to write this, because I was waiting to see what GTA Online was all about. As of writing this I still have not had a chance to properly do that. For some reason I can't connect to other players with any regularity. I can't tell if it's because it's still horribly busted or if it's because my internet connection is terrible. I'll keep trying it out every so often, because it seems interesting. It just isn't fun by yourself. Especially when almost any of the missions require 2 people to play. With that said this will only be about the single player.

Starting with Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PlayStation 2 Rockstar essentially created the modern open world sandbox game. With each successive entry in the series it got increasingly crazy and impressive. San Andreas was the last in the PS2 trilogy and it's still to this day one of my favorite games. When they moved to the current generation of consoles with Grand Theft Auto IV they also went for a more realistic world. Not everyone was very receptive to it, but that's the direction they went down. With Grand Theft Auto V Rockstar kept the realism of IV, while injecting the humor and zaniness of the PS2 iterations.

Somehow Rockstar always outdoes themselves with this franchise and I promise you that Grand Theft Auto V is no different. Initially I was expecting it to be earth shattering and filled with new ideas to reinvigorate the genre. That's what I thought I wanted. Instead what I got was what I essentially see as the apex of open world gaming. Rockstar has in my opinion perfected the formula for open world games and I don't know where they can really go from here. All I know is that GTA V was one hell of a game.

Epic Crime Saga

Unlike previous entries in the franchise GTA V has you take control of not one, but three main characters. When described it sounded like you would be able to seamlessly switch between any of the three characters at any time and they would be going about their regular everyday lives. In reality it doesn't work exactly like that, but it's close enough. Using the right stick you can switch to the character of your choosing. The camera zooms out above the city and within ten seconds it zooms back in onto your newly selected character. They'll be doing something random. They're all pre-coded events, but they give the illusion that the characters are living out their everyday lives when you're not using them. It's a really cool effect.

You take on the roles of Michael, Franklin, and Trevor. Michael is a middle aged man who lives what most would consider a life of luxury. He has retired from bank robbing, but longs to have that same kind of excitement in his life again. Franklin is young hood who wants to get into some legitimate crime and with the help of Michael he's able to do that. Last but not least there's Trevor and he's quite literally a psychopath. He used to run jobs with Michael before their whole operation was put to rest. The story revolves around these three characters and their series of elaborate heists. 

You get to know Trevor, Franklin, and Michael very well by the end of the game,

These three unlikely friends are amazing characters. They may be caricatures, but they're extremely well realized caricatures. I often find that when games try to tell this kind of story they fall flat. However, that's never been the case in the GTA games for me. I think that the high quality of the voice acting is one of the major factors that sets this franchise apart from so many others. You'll meet all kinds of characters throughout the game and very few of them even give sub-par performances. The story really drags you in and it's hard not to keep going from mission to mission just to see what's going to happen next. It's an epic crime saga that's truly exhilarating to experience. It has everything you'd want in a crime story. 

It also helps that the amount of detail in the game is unparalleled. The world is gigantic and every single nook and cranny of it is filled with minute details. There's a scene early on in the game where you go to a hackers house. You can walk all around inside and see readable papers lining the walls, anime figures, computer screens filled with information, and food littered all over the floor. It's all so intricately placed and it's only in the game for a scarce five minutes. I don't know if you can every go back inside the house, but regardless it's filled with a ridiculous amount of detail for such a short scene. That kind of thing happens all the time as well, it's not just that one scene.  

Look at the detail in that city!

With Rockstar's track record they can take as long as they need to make a game. They did take an awfully long time with GTA V, but you can actually see it. It's not like with most games where it's apparent that they were just throwing money at it to try and make the game better. They created a living breathing world heavily based off of California. Specifically the city of Los Santos is based off of Los Angeles. I've seen people claim that there are tons of landmarks, even tiny local restaurants in the game, which is a level of detail that most games just don't have. Hell, the venue for E3 is even accurately portrayed. What other games have full blown fake movies and TV shows you can watch? How about a fully featured fake internet that you can browse? The amount of content in the game is absolute madness. 

Open World Mayhem

One of the major issues with the GTA games in the past has been the gameplay itself. GTA games consist of two main activities, driving and shooting. Driving has always been fine, but in GTA IV they changed the handling to be closer to real life. In the end everything handled like an unwieldy boat and it was generally very unsatisfying. With GTA V the handling is much closer to what it was during the PS2 iterations of the franchise. It has a very arcade-like feel. You can get up to speed very quickly and the handling is loose, which makes it very easy to take sharp turns. 

Driving still takes up a majority of your time in GTA V. You'll have to drive to a mission marker, where you'll be given a mission and sent to drive somewhere else. More often than not you'll be sent to a location to shoot some guys. When you're done you'll then have to drive back. This didn't bother me so much, because I enjoyed the driving in the game. I know that some people do not though and it can get to be a bit tedious when missions are far away. Sometimes it can take upwards of ten minutes to reach your destination. In that case you can forgo driving yourself altogether and take a cab to your destination. It's not quite as beneficial though, because you won't be gaining any driving stat points.

You do a lot of driving, but the handling makes it fun.

Just like in San Andreas you can level up your stats in GTA V. You may not have to worry about getting fat, but you can increase your skill at driving, shooting, and many other things. For example the more you drive the better your driving skill will be. Some characters are innately better at things than others are. For example Franklin is good at driving, so he will automatically be able to handle cars much better than Trevor can. To add a little bit more flavor to each character they have a special ability to complement their innate skill set. Franklin can slow down time while driving in order to make hair-pin turns, Michael can go into a bullet-time state in order to take down enemies, and Trevor goes into a rage state where he takes almost no damage. They're not game breaking, but the abilities are nice to have in a pinch and help differentiate the characters a bit.

The shooting mechanics have been tweaked in a way that makes the act of killing enemies trivial. Rockstar apparently got the memo that their combat wasn't exactly the greatest. Previously you could target an enemy and switch to other targets with the push of a button. You had to be facing the enemy though. In GTA V you can just push the button to target and your reticle will automatically snap to the nearest enemy. If you flick the stick in the direction of another enemy it will move to auto target that enemy instead. This makes it super easy to pop out of cover and mow down every enemy in your path with little to no effort. It's not the most satisfying system, but it takes away a great deal of the frustration from previous iterations of the franchise. You can also free aim if you like, which works fairly well, but isn't anywhere near as efficient. I probably would have used free aim if I wasn't trying to complete combat scenarios as quickly as possible to see the next story beat. Plus you go down pretty easy, so I didn't find myself aiming for very long.

The auto aiming makes it very easy to take down helicopters.

While it is true that most missions just involve you driving and shooting GTA V is actually good about mission variety. Moreso than in past games you're sent to do things other than shoot someone in the face. An early mission has you buying clothes so you can sneak into the San Andreas equivalent of FaceBook to plant a bomb in their new prototype phone. One mission, which I found to be quite disturbing has Trevor torturing a suspected terrorist. You're given a choice of what torture device to use and then you have to perform button prompts to actually do the torturing. It did an excellent job of making me feel super uncomfortable. One of my personal favorites had me repelling down a building in order to kidnap someone.

The missions that truly shine in GTA V though are the heists. Apparently Rockstar heard that everyone really liked the bank heist in GTA IV, so they made a whole game based around large heists just like that one. At first you'll be tasked to stake out the area so that you can formulate a plan. Once you have all the information the game draws it all out on a whiteboard and makes you choose one of two ways to go about the heist. You'll get the opportunity to pick crew members you think will be able to help you out. Each crew member has their own unique stats and will take different shares of the money you get from the heist. If the crew members live through the heist their stats will increase, or they'll die on the job and be gone for good. 

The heists are easily the best missions in the game.

When you select how you're going to go about the heist you'll be sent to collect the supplies needed. The heists are probably the best part of the game, which makes it a shame that there are so few of them in it. During a job there's a sense of tension unlike anything I've felt in a video game before. They're very exciting, because you took the time to get everything ready and can see it all play out. Supposedly GTA online will have heists at some point, so maybe I can get my fix there when the time comes.

Outside of combat and driving there are many activities you can take part in. The sad part is that I didn't really take place in all that many of them. You can dive for treasure in a submarine, golf, do yoga, run triathlons, base jump, and a whole slew of other side activities. The only one that I did end up playing was tennis, just because I had to see what it was like. Surprisingly it was actually a serviceable mini-game, but not anything to write home about. It's cool that the world is populated with all of these things to do, but there's really no incentive to do them. They're just there to fill up space and give you something to do outside of the missions. I don't know that I'd say content just for the sake of having content is the best thing in the world.

Where Can They Go From Here?

It's hard for me to imagine where the Grand Theft Auto franchise can go from here. Rockstar created so many excellent characters and a compelling story. On top of that they created a world so rich in detail that I don't even have the time or wherewithal to see it all. They've taken everything they've learned since GTA 3 and laid it all out there. The level of realism they've reached is both technically impressive and somewhat scary at the same time. 

I don't really know that I want another Grand Theft Auto game after this one. I'm sure that if they release another one I'll jump all over it though. It just seems like at this point there's nowhere for them to go but down. I've seen a fair amount of people who disagree with this sentiment, but the internet is full of complainers. 

Grand Theft Auto V is undoubtedly one of the best games of this console generation. If you haven't played it you definitely should. The gameplay isn't the most compelling out there, but it's well worth putting up with in order to experience the world class characters and writing.

     -Manny

Game Time - September 2013

It took me a little over a week to complete the story of Grand Theft Auto V. Just as I suspected I had an incredible time going through it. What's weird is that I didn't feel exactly how I thought I would about it. Instead of being a ground breaking game with tons of new ideas it instead perfected a stagnating formula. In my opinion Grand Theft Auto V is the peak of the open world genre at this point in time. Open world games have been getting old, but GTA V shows that open world games can still be improved upon, but better yet they can still be well produced. Open world games are always filled with a certain amount of issues due to the sheer amount of processes going simultaneously. GTA V takes previously made conventions and polishes them to a never before seen luster.

I absolutely loved GTA V, but I'm not going to talk about it in depth here. It deserves its own special time, which it will be getting some time in the next few days. I have to gather up my thoughts, because I have a whole lot of them.

Other than that I only really played two games for any reasonable length of time. I made the mistake of buying Pokemon Rumble U, and I had $60 of PSN credit so I ended up getting Dragon's Crown for free. I actually like it despite how some aspects of it make me sigh in disappointment.

Without any real GTA talk this edition will be a bit light, but that's okay. Video game talk is still video game talk. It's game time!

Pokemon Rumble U

Every time a new Wii-U game comes out I hope that my buyers remorse will go away. Pikmin 3 was a great game, but it left me wanting so much more. I really don't know why I was expecting anything different from Pokemon Rumble U.

Pokemon Rumble is now apparently a spin off series of Pokemon. The first game titled Pokemon Rumble was a downloadable title on the Wii. It introduced the concept that there are Pokemon Toys that come to life when no humans are around kind of like Toy Story, except with way worse animation. Also every one of them is windup and looks kind of like a blob. Anyways, it was a fun little co-op game. Each player controlled a Pokemon and could do one of two moves. As you progressed through the stages you would  randomly get new and more powerful Pokemon.

A 3DS sequel Pokemon Rumble Blast came along as a full blown retail release. It had a lot more content and an actual plot! Now we're here on the Wii-U and Pokemon Rumble U is stuck somewhere in-between its two predecessors. You don't traverse through levels. Instead you fight hordes of Pokemon in different arena settings, which isn't very exciting. None of the levels are very challenging either.

I don't really get what's ascetically pleasing about this art style.

The story exists, while simultaneously barely existing at all. In the beginning you're treated to what can barely be called a cinematic. Some Pokemon toys were dropped in the river on accident and they need to find their way back to the toy store where they belong. However, along the way they'll encounter Pokemon who have been brainwashed and don't want them to go back. These later scenes are played out by showing a picture on the screen with text that scrolls so slow it's painful.

I did have fun playing co-op with some friends. If I had played the game solo I don't know that I would have finished it. What blows my mind is that the game is $18. Let me be the first to say that, that's way too much money for the game. It's still a downloadable title like the original, but it costs more and has far less content. Sure you can play as every single Pokemon, but that doesn't matter if all you need to do is repeatedly use the same attack at the center of an arena. At least traversing the levels gave the feel of more interactivity.

Ohh nooo she dropped the Pokemon!

Maybe I would have liked the game a lot more if I had bought some of the NFC toys. Apparently you can pay in game money to level the toys up and buy them new moves, which you can not do with any of the in game Pokemon. I'd consider buying the Lucario figure, but putting down another $6 dollars to a price tag that's already way too high doesn't seem logical.

Things like this make me feel like the Wii-U is going to continue to flounder.

Dragon's Crown

Perhaps you've seen Dragon's Crown before. The game is entirely hand drawn and animated. It looks gorgeous both when it's still and in motion. Perhaps you've also seen the female wizard character with comically large breasts, or the Amazon warrior with the worlds most gross looking thunder thighs? Yeah, the art direction of this game is a little questionable.

Dragon's Crown was developed by Vanillaware. All of their games are hand drawn and beautifully hand drawn and animated just like Dragon's Crown. Muramasa, and Odin Sphere are just two examples. What's weird is that neither of those games have the insanely sexualized characters that this one does. I would forgive the game if it were just the two playable characters that were hypersexualized, but it doesn't really stop there. The game is set in medieval times and it does a very good job of setting that vibe. The narrator is amazing and gets you right into the correct mindset. Then you enter the magic shop and the shopkeeper's boobs are taking up over half the screen as she moans asking you what you'd like. It's not even funny, it's just kind of gross. Weird things like that happen in levels as well. A full screen mermaid appears at one point. She's half fish, but she still has a normal human butt. Also she's naked?

Is it safe to have boobs that large!?

It all comes across as immature. Most of the women in the game have a huge rack, or a huge butt. It's like what would come out of a middle school kid's mind. I'm also well aware that there are people who are way into that kind of thing. That would be fine and dandy if it weren't at odds with the rest of the game. That is to say it's a very well done loot driven, side-scrolling, beat-em-up game with many RPG elements thrown in for good measure.

I personally play as the archer, who is oddly the only female who looks like a normal human being. She has reasonable proportions and is covered up by a cloak. That's not really the point though. As a game Dragon's Crown is actually very fun. Yes it's a beat-em-up, but it's not the kind where you can really mash attack until everything dies. Technically you could do that, but it wouldn't end up working out very well later in the game. Pushing the attack button with different directions will result in different attacks. They can be chained together to juggle opponents. The better your combo the higher your score. Since score is your experience you want to get as high a score as possible. When you throw in different skills and characer specific abilities there are a ton of ways to mangle your foes.

This is what it's all about. Wailing on enemies and getting sweet sweet loot.

On top of being a competent playing game it looks incredible in motion. Juggling foes has never looked this fabulous with all of it's hand drawn goodness. Normally these types of games get stale after a few hours, but with all of the loot to collect and quests to complete there's a lot to do in Dragon's Crown. I haven't done it yet, but I can see myself continuing to play even after the main quest is over. It's a fun game. In fact I'm going to be playing it with some friends tomorrow.

What drags me down is how immature the designs of the women are in the game. I know I sound like some white knight protecting the sanctity of women, but that's not what I'm trying to say here. It's just a bad design decision that is at odds with the rest of the game tonally. It makes it seem like an immature waste of time and I bet a lot of people dismissed it when they first saw the sorceress character. People wonder why video games aren't taken seriously, and character designs like that certainly aren't helping. It can't even really be defended as a stylistic choice, because so few characters in Vanillaware's other games look like that.

The art looks insanely good in all Vanillaware games.

So yeah, the character designs aren't the best, but the game itself is superb and I recommend it, especially if you like playing co-op with friends. Surprisingly the online works well too if you want to play with some strangers.

The Holy Grail

I'm going to be typing up my thoughts on GTA V later this week, so look forward to that gem. This month was a bit light in terms of the games I played other than GTA, but that's okay. Next month is basically the holy grail for me in terms of video games.

Somehow three franchises that I love unconditionally all have games coming out in October. Disgaea D2, Pokemon X/Y, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies will soon be in my hands. I don't even know how I'll be able to choose which one I want to play at any given time. Just thinking about it makes me giddy.

All three are undoubtedly going to be awesome, but I'm looking forward to Pokemon the most. In case you haven't seen it there are some major leaks happening. People have gotten the game a few weeks early and are posting things at an alarming rate. The time before new Pokemon games always gets me so excited!

I promise you next months edition of Game Time will not be light on content. In fact it might be too long for its own good. Perhaps I'll have to make a few separate posts. I'll think more about that when the time comes though. In the mean time thanks for joining me for another installation of Game Time. See you next time.

     -Manny

A Bizarre Adventure into Importing: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle

I've been a big fan of Japanese games for as long as I can remember. Over the years there have been numerous titles I've wanted to play, but had no way of doing so due to a lack of localization. A combination of the language barrier and high cost has kept me from importing games. It's especially a problem since the majority of games I would want to import are all heavily text based. On top of that most consoles are region locked and I'm not totally irresponsible with my money, so I can't justify buying a Japanese console.

This past June however, I imported my first game. It was Captain Rainbow for the Wii. The Wii is region locked, but if you use the homebrew channel you can play games from other regions. While I may have imported it I still have not played it. Captain Rainbow is very story based and pretty much incomprehensible without English text. The reason I got it was because there is an English fan patch in the works and the $20 price tag was too cheap for me to pass up. Hopefully I'll get to play it in early 2014, but that's not why we're here today.

Some time within the last year I began to see trailers for an all new Jojo's Bizarre Adventure fighting game developed by Cyber Connect 2. They're the studio behind the incredibly animated Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm games. Something about the trailers caught my attention  and I hoped that it would be localized here. After a bit of research I found out that it had/has little to no chance of ever seeing a release outside of Japan.

What is it?

When I made the decision to buy Jojo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle I knew very little about the franchise it was based on. I had played the original Capcom developed fighting game on the Dreamcast, but it was just a weird novelty fighting game to me. I have now consumed a fair deal of the Jojo universe and know a whole lot more about it.

The series is a still ongoing manga (Japanese comic book) written by Hirohiko Araki that began in 1987. There are 8 parts each with their own protagonist. They all focus on the eternal battle between the Joestar family and the immortal vampire DIO. Each part takes place in the time frame when it's written, so the current part 8 was started in 2011 and that's when it takes place. For some reason each main character's name has Jojo in it somehow. For example the original main character's name is Jonathan Joestar. Both names start with Jo. It's a really weird series. Who knows why that's the case.

These are the 8 protagonists. They are all part of the Joestar bloodline.

Recently a new anime was started that has gone on for two seasons. It covered the first two parts of the manga. These are the two least known entries of the entire series. The characters use a special energy called Ripple (Hamon in Japanese) in order to do what are essentially magical karate attacks. The series started to gain most of its popularity during the third part. This is the part that the Dreamcast game was based on. Chances are if you've seen any Jojos it's from the third part since it's the only part that was translated to English in both manga and anime form.

Instead of using ripple the characters instead began to wield stands. Technically though stands are the manifestation of an individual's ripple. You could even say that it's their persona. A stand is essentially a ghostly figure that gives the user supernatural powers. So yeah, they're basically ghosts that stand behind a person and help them pummel others. It's all pretty confusing, but that hasn't stopped me from diving head first into the series. I've now watched the first season of the anime and just recently finished reading the third part of the manga in its entirety.

This is my favorite character Jotaro. He's the main character of part 3 Stardust Crusaders.

I really find the series to be interesting, because it's so off the wall crazy. DIO threw a steamroller on top of someone just because he could! That's why it saddens me that there is such a slim chance that the series will ever make it outside of Japan. It's quite literally a copyright nightmare. Perhaps you noticed that the bad guy of the entire series shares his name with the band DIO. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Characters throughout the series and their stands share the names of famous western bands and musical acts. These are just a few of the ones I can think of : Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Pearl Jam, Cars, Doobie Brothers, Lisa Lisa, Devo and Vanilla Ice. No joke, one of the villains in part three is named Vanilla Ice. Part three of the manga was translated into English by VIZ Media, but almost all of the names had to be changed. Araki the creator of the series is strictly against name changes, which is one of the main reasons why no other Jojo related things have left Japan. If they can't change the names then they're going to get their pants sued off.

Hong Kong Dollars

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle came out on August 29th. I had the game that same day. Leading up to the release I began to watch every single video about the game that came out. Everything about it was so unknown to me, which made it supremely interesting. The animation was gorgeous and the characters looked so weird. At that point I had only watched the first season of the new anime and had never even looked at any of the manga. It was about a week before the game came out that I made the decision that I had to have it.

This is the video that put me over the edge.

Originally I had pre-ordered a physical copy of the game, but as of the release day it still had not shipped. I cancelled my order and decided to purchase a digital copy. In order to do that I had to buy some digital PlayStation Network cards, because US credit cards don't work on the Japanese PlayStation Store. I quickly realized that Japanese PlayStation cards were ludicrously overpriced and bought some Hong Kong PlayStation cards instead. They were a fair amount cheaper and for some reason the Hong Kong PlayStation Store is in poorly translated English. It may have been one of the shadiest things I've ever done on the Internet.

A friend instructed me to go to the website Pcgamesupply.com, because he had purchased Hong Kong PSN cards from them before. I bought two 200 Hong Kong Dollar cards and an 80 Hong Kong Dollar card. This gave me enough to purchase the game for 449 HKDs. I gave the site my credit card information at which point they charged me the $79 for the cards. Yes, I paid $79 for a $60 game. That's how overpriced the stupid PSN cards are. Not even ten minutes later I was able to view pictures they had taken of physical PSN cards in order to get my codes. I punched them in and began downloading the game. I've had the game for around two weeks now and I regret nothing.

It's an All-Star Battle

I didn't read the third part of the manga until this past week. Despite a lack of knowledge I still managed to fall in love with the game.

All-Star Battle is a straight up fighting game. It is almost void of all story and the main menu is entirely in English. That means I can navigate to where I want to go fairly well and learning how to play isn't too hard because it's fairly similar to other fighting games. The weird game specific things I figured out as I went along. What's crazy is that it's not a very good fighting game. It's fairly unbalanced and broken in a myriad of ways, which makes it pretty fun. It probably helps that I'm not good at fighting games, so I'm not good enough to have issues with specific characters and game mechanics. It's an ignorance is bliss type of scenario. All I know is that it's fun to hit the other character and it's even more fun to hit them with a crazy floating stand.

The character doesn't even need to punch the enemy themselves if they don't want to.

As I said previously the game is beautifully animated. What makes it even better is that something insane happens all the time. When I was messing around with the game at first almost every single attack was mind blowing. I now know just how insane everything in the series is and this game captures that very well. Everyone makes super flamboyant poses and screams out craziness. It's especially weird to hear someone yell Red Hot Chili Peppers in English during a constant stream of Japanese. The entire game is pure unadulterated Japanese madness in a way that I haven't been able to experience in years. This kind of stuff doesn't usually make it's way to the West anymore.

There are just over 30 characters in the main game with more coming as downloadable content. It's nice that each character feels unique, so I might actually buy the additional characters. Apparently I'm not the only person who thought it was a good game either. In its first week over 400,000 copies were sold in Japan.

The characters and animation in the game look beautiful.

That isn't to say that there haven't been any complaints about the game. The story mode is terrible and I'd probably be more upset if I could read or speak Japanese. You basically go through a series of fights with spoken text in between. You can beat it in two hours maximum. It's kind of disappointing considering how much effort CC2 puts into the story for their Naruto games. The killer for a lot of people is the campaign mode though. In campaign mode you can unlock alternate costumes, colors, taunts, and poses for the characters. At first it sounds awesome, but for some reason progress is gated like a free to play game. You fight against computer controlled versions of other people playing the game and computer controlled bosses in order to unlock everything. Each battle uses one bar of a battery and when that battery runs out you have to wait real time for it to refill. As of right now it takes 55 minutes to refill the whole thing, but eventually that's going to turn into 3 or 4 hours, which is far too long.

These things don't bother me very much, because I don't know any better when everything is in Japanese. Sure it's annoying that I can't unlock everything all at once, but it's keeping me playing the game. Plus it's not like I'd be able to sell it back since I got a digital copy. For my first imported game I think that I did pretty well. I didn't have any problems getting it and I am totally on board with everything it has to offer. It was my gateway into the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure universe.

I think this game is fun. You should check it out.

If you find any of this interesting I highly recommend you check out videos of the game. It's complete and utter madness, but it's surprisingly fun to play and even watch. I'm going to be purchasing all the DLC and since this is an import game I might write up something new for each piece I download. People need to know if the characters are worth downloading or not!

Update: During the Toky Game Show it was announced that Jojo's All-Star Battle would indeed be coming to America. I can't wait to see what they change. I'm generally intrigued to see how well it will sell here. Looks like I'm going to have to buy it again. At least now I can get a physical copy.

     -Manny

Game Time - August 2013

Guess what? This installment of Game Time is a few days late and I apologize. However, you will now be able to enjoy hearing all about my gaming exploits in the month of August!

So, I made an impulse decision to buy the Wii-U on launch day. I deeply regretted my purchase until I began what could be referred to as my Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate addiction. After about 300 hours of play I weaned myself off of the game and left my Wii-U to collect dust. Normally I'd say that's hyperbole, but the thing does get dusty pretty quickly.

This past month I actually booted it up once again in order to play the highly anticipated Pikmin 3. I had a delightful time playing the game, even if it was far too brief. I'm going to be honest when I say that I don't think that even first party Nintendo games are enough to save the system anymore, but that's not the point! The point is that I booted up my Wii-U to play a first party Nintendo game that wasn't a mini game collection!

Other than the mini-gameless fun I had on the Wii-U I also played the PS3 a fair bit. Tales of Xillia came out at the beginning of the month, so I got my Japanese action RPG on for about 50 hours. The game was good, but I was disappointed. Get ready, because I'm going to complain about it quite a bit.

Last but certainly not least I had a lot of fun playing Dive Kick. The ridiculous fighting game parody finally got released. I dove, but I also kicked.

I have new September games I should be playing right now, so let's get on with it. It's Game Time!

Pikmin 3 

Nintendo hasn't exactly been churning out quality products on the Wii-U, but they promised me that Pikmin 3 would be worth the wait. It was even delayed, because it needed more polish. Now we're almost a year into the system's life span and Pikmin 3 is the first real game Nintendo has released for the thing after its initial launch. They seem to think that Pikmin 3 is going to lead the charge into this coming holiday season and boost the Wii-U's sales. I don't want to be a downer, but I don't think it's going to.

I really liked Pikmin 3, just as I liked the previous two games in the franchise. If you also enjoyed those games then this one will be right up your alley as well. That's because it isn't a whole lot different than its predecessors. You still gather up the cute little plant critters and throw them at things in order to complete tasks. You can have 100 Pikmin following you at a time, but more can be stored in the spaceship known as "The Onion" in case you ever need to pull some out. When the Pikmin defeat an enemy or find a colored pellet they will bring them back to the onion in order to create new Pikmin for you.

Pikmin like to chill out in the Onion.

The main difference in Pikmin 3 comes from the fact that you now have control over three characters. They crash landed on the Pikmin planet while searching for a way to save the denizens of their starving planet. It just so happens that the planet Pikmin 3 takes place on is rich with gigantic fruit that they can use to make juice. You are tasked with gathering fruit while trying to find the necessary parts to fix your spaceship and return home. These are three new characters Charlie the captain, Alph the engineer, and Brittany the biologist. If you liked Captain Olimar do not fear, because you still get to hear about him and Louie in diary entries scattered throughout the world.

With three characters at your disposal the game places an emphasis on multitasking, but not enough of an emphasis to make it a necessity. Like the previous two games you are given a time limit for each day. You have until the sun goes down before you have to get back on the ship and fly into orbit. There will often be numerous things you want to get done in a day and while three characters makes it easier I often found myself only using one at a time. You can have someone get a fruit, while someone else is destroying a barrier.

Even though you have three characters you probably won't use them all.

At the end of each day the game will show you all the fruit you acquired and then squeeze it into juice. Depending on the size of the fruit it will make a certain amount of juice. In order to continue playing the game you need one jar of juice per night for your characters to consume. This is supposed to add a sense of urgency, which is why you would want to be multitasking. However, you become overrun with juice very quickly and it doesn't really matter if it takes an extra day to complete a task. I beat the game in around 40 days and I still had a ridiculous amount of juice left over.

Pikmin 3 tries to move forward, but it's ultimately stuck in the past. There really isn't any reason that the game should have the day night cycle anymore. All it does is artificially gate your progress. To make it a bit more annoying you have to go through all the fruit squeezing and hear one of the crew members diary entries every single night. It's cool at first, but it gets a little tedious after a while. One thing I will say is that the graphics are amazing. Well, not all of them. The main thing that impressed me was the fruit. Whenever you get a fruit you can rotate it around and look at it, and they all look amazing. Something about them looks so real and delicious, while the rest of the game just looks average.

The fruit in Pikmin 3 looks ridiculously good.

I don't really know how I feel about Pikmin 3. It's a fun game and I liked it while I was playing it, but that was only for around 13 hours. The game was super polished, but there isn't a lot of reason to go back and play any more of it. On top of that it's almost the exact same game that the previous ones were. I normally don't care about that, but there just wasn't a whole lot to get really excited about. I can't tell if I'm getting old and jaded, or if Nintendo isn't releasing the kind of magical console games they used to. Their handheld games on the other hand are still out of this world so I don't know what they're doing,


Tales of Xillia

The first Tales game I played was Tales of Phantasia on the PSOne. I never finished it, but I thought it was pretty good. The first Tales game I played to completion was Tales of Symphonia on the Gamecube and to this day it remains one of my favorite games. For one reason or another I didn't really continue on the Tales train so I missed out on all the PS2 iterations. I've read a lot about the series and I've played a bunch of the more recent installments. Xillia looked to be one of the best in the series, so I went ahead and picked it up.

I'm not going to say that Xillia is bad, because I enjoyed it. However, I was certainly disappointed. It starts off very strong. You can choose to follow the story through the eyes of Jude the medical student, or Milla Maxwell the lord of spirits in human form. I chose Jude, because in battle he uses his fists and that's badass. However, shortly after I left the first town I stopped thinking that everything was so great.

I like punching stuff in battle

Tales games are known for being filled to the brim with content. You can get tons of sidequests and most of them are actually worth your time. The battle systems are action oriented and very fun. Tales games tend to have have fairly similar anime-esque stories, but the characters often overshadow the played out plot. Xillia does have a fun battle system, but I can't really say it was filled to the brim with content, or that the characters were very good.

Something about Xillia made me miss the way JRPGs used to be, or more specifically I wanted this game to be more like Tales of Symphonia. I've seen a lot of people say that Xillia is their new favorite Tales game, which I just can't understand because it seems like a stripped down version of what these games used to be. There is no overworld map. Instead you travel from town to town by going through huge wide open plains inhabited by way too many monsters. Sure, you can battle the monsters, which is fun. It just gets annoying after a while, because the battles are so stupidly easy. Even boss encounters were a walk in the park the entire way through the game. I could have turned up the difficulty, but the normal difficulty should not be the easiest thing in the world. If I changed the game to easy I probably could have smashed my face on the controller to get through the battles!

The battle system in Xillia is great.

Hardly any of the sidequests were worth it and the game lets you know every time you can do a new one. Despite that I still missed quite a few. The game also marks off whatever NPCs you can talk to on a map making exploration in towns mean absolutely nothing. Upon completing the game all I had left to do was beat the secret dungeon and secret boss. I had done every other thing available to me. This all wouldn't have been so bad if the plot and characters hadn't worn me down by the end.

I tried so hard to like Jude as a character, but I just couldn't do it. The entire time he tries to define his purpose in life, but just ends up coming off as a wishy washy tool. He follows Milla, because he feels obligated to take responsibility for his actions despite the fact that there was nothing to take responsibility for in the first place. Oh yeah, he's also inexplicably in love with Milla even though she's a freaking spirit and he knows that... Then you have my favorite character Alvin who was pretty cool for most of the game until about halfway through when they take his character and smash it to pieces. I won't bore you with the details of that though. What sucks is that there were parts of Xillia's plot that were genuinely surprising, but I just couldn't get behind any of the characters to form a bond with the plot.

Oh Alvin, why did they have to ruin you?

This is a problem I have when I play a lot of modern games. I get stuck thinking about how much better games used to be, or how the last iteration of a game was in comparison to the new one. This game made me think that maybe I had just grown out of the Tales series. In order to test that I fired up the Xbox 360 and started to play Tales of Vesperia. I am now near the end of Vesperia and I think that it is better than Xillia in every possible facet except the battle system. Vesperia may in fact be better than Symphonia, which means a lot coming from me. Xillia wasn't a bad game by any means I just didn't connect with it at all. It's a fun JRPG on a console that hasn't seen a lot of them.

DiveKick

When I first saw DiveKick I knew it was supposed to be a joke, because that's what it was conceived as. It's still pretty funny to me, but I think that at some point it evolved into something much more than a joke. For anyone who doesn't know what DiveKick is I'll explain it, because it's a fairly simple concept.

It's a stripped down fighting game. Each fighter starts on the opposite end of the screen. Like all fighting games the goal is to defeat your opponent, but the catch is that there are only two buttons. One is used to dive into the air and the other is used to kick down. If you push the kick button on the ground you can push yourself backwards. If you kick the opponent then they die and you win the round. All it takes is one kick.

This is a real video game.

See, DiveKick started off as an inside joke of the fighting game community. Some of the characters in the game are even based off of prominent people in the fighting game community such as Madcatz community manager Markman and CEO tournament organizer Alex Jebaily. Hell, the games creator "Keits" runs Shoryuken one of the main fighting game websites on the internet.

Seeing the game in action is even a joke. It looks like a bad flash game. All of the characters say stupid things and the announcer is downright hilarious. In spite of that somehow the game transformed into something amazing. I don't know if it was intentional or if I'm just looking too deep into the game, but it's basically a fighting game distilled down into a form that anyone can enjoy.

At some point the characters in DiveKick got a little out of hand.

I like to watch fighting games, because I find them exciting. Playing them on the other hand does not always feel the same way. I'm not as good as a lot of the people I play with, which can take away a lot of the fun. That's not to say that I've never had fun playing fighting games. It's a thrill when you're having a close match and one more hit could decide the match. That moment is literally all DiveKick is. If you get hit you lose the round. More than that it takes away all the bullshit systems that most fighting games have and is just pure mechanics. Well, not exactly you still have super meter and can do special attacks by pushing both buttons, but it's still almost just pure mechanics.

DiveKick is an interesting game that doesn't seem to be getting the attention it deserves. It's a fascinating concept and it could be a bridge that gets people into more involved fighting games if seen in the right light.

GTA is coming 

Recently I feel like all I do is hate on the games I've been playing, but that will certainly not be the case next time I write one of these.

On September 17th I will be playing Grand Theft Auto V. There is no question in my mind that it will be incredible. I have some pretty bold statements I could make about it, but I'll save those for the next installment. Rock Star seems to be making something special and it could be a game that people will look back to as one of the finest games this generation.

Other than that you can look forward to hearing all about the stupid amount I played One Piece Pirate Warriors 2.  I started playing it last night and it sure is another Dynasty Warriors One Piece game. I might play some other games too, but GTA V is most likely going to consume every waking hour of free time I have. I can't wait to get back to Los Santos!

See you next month.

    -Manny