Shin Megami Tensei 4

Hoy!
 

I just finished this game and I had to rush to my computer and type out this post because HOLY SHIT is it good.  If you need a monster collecting game on the go, put the Pokemon shit away and get yourself some of this hotness

The game follows the adventures of Flynn (or whatever you chose to name him), a strapping young man who has come to the prosperous city of Mikado to become a Samurai.  After doing a sort of test to see if a mystic gauntlet will allow him to become a Samurai, he joins the ranks of the soldiers sworn to protect the people from demons that dwell in a cave just under the town called Naraku.  It doesn't take long faffing around in there though before OOPS! You're actually in a post apocalyptic Tokyo and you must explore the ruined city and continue an adventure that will end up shaping the entire world.

 Game play wise, for people familiar with SMT, it's more SMT goodness albeit slightly easier compared to previous entries.  The game does however have an expert mode that, at time of writing, I have not tried yet due to it being locked behind a game clear but I suppose for real die-hard fans the challenge is there.  For those not familiar with SMT, the game is sort of like a demonic Pokemon where you run around, recruit demons and use them to fight enemies and bosses.  To get demons you have to negotiate with them, answering their questions or giving them money and items to convince them to join you.  From there you can also fuse demons together to create newer, stronger demons which you are going to want to do if you don't want to make the game incredibly hard for yourself.

Usually here, with most SMT games I'd be warning you about the games difficulty as this series is sort of notorious (outside of the Persona spin-off franchise) for being quite difficult but if you were looking for a place to start, 4 is a good bet as it has a weird reverse difficulty curve.  The first parts of the game in Naraku are tough as nails with certain enemies and bosses just destroying you and your demons.  But after a while the game starts to get easier and easier.  For me personally, I was so pumped up and overpowered that the final boss could barely touch me and even when he did get a few good hits in I was able to fully heal it off in a single turn.   

The game is also pretty replayable with it's 3 (technically 4 but one of them is for little babies) endings.  The game will pose a number of questions and situations at you and depending on what choices you make you will either go down the Law or Chaos path which have different bosses and such during each.  For people willing to look at a guide you also have the choice to do a True Neutral path which involves doing a bunch of side quests and making some very specific choices at very specific times which is a good goal to go for on a second run I feel. 

As far as criticisms go, of course I have to shit on the game for locking the expert mode behind a game clear.  I'm VERY familiar with this series and the games normal mode after the opening area was pretty much a joke.  Probably perfect for newcomers but for a seasoned veteran it's very easy so if the story doesn't sweep you up like it swept me up, then the game MAY get boring for you. Also I can't quite place my finger on exactly why but I hate the interface for demon fusion in this entry.  I just find it clunky and annoying to deal with.  My final big criticism is that the "Challenge Quests" are extremely uninspired and boring.  I was trying to be diligent and do as many as possible at first but after a while I got so sick of them that I just ignored them entirely.  Due to this it would EXTRA piss me off when you try to do a demon negotiation and instead of doing that they would waste your time with "hey guy wanna do a quest for me?" but once you accept it they stop bothering you about it so its a minor issue really.

Seriously though, if you're into these kind of monster collecting games I HIGHLY recommend SMT4, it's one of the best of it's kind and probably the best game I've ever played on the 3DS.  So stop wasting time and go hunt some demons already

My Friend Pedro

Just before my winter holiday started I had the joy of playing through My Friend Pedro on PC and while it is a simple game, it's an extremely fun one that you should check out.

There isn't too much of a story to speak of in Pedro, you wake up in some place and get told to kill dudes by a Banana.  I think you're trying to get revenge on someone but I don't really remember since it was early December when I finished it but the story is basically just background noise as you run through stages shooting dudes and having your banana companion quip at you.

The gameplay however is where things get interesting.  At a basic level you are tasked with running through the stages from the start to the end, killing all the dudes along the way.  You are given a pair of pistols to do this with and you can find a bunch of other weapons on the way.  You are also given a bullet time mechanic to help you line up shots and avoid damage and if you are wielding two guns you  can use the right click to split your aim between two targets.  The game itself, at least on normal difficulty, isn't that hard to just finish, but where things get tricky is the scoring system.  You are given points for each kill, for each kill you make within a certain time frame you are given a multiplier for those points and on top of that you are awarded extra points for being flashy.  So for example, you COULD stand at a distance and pop at guys one by one and play it safe OR you could run into the room, flip off a wall, shoot and exploding barrel and use your split aim to headshot the two guys nearest to you in mid air for big score.  There's also plenty of pans, bouncy thingies and other environmental things to help you with the carnage.  Those who play nice and flashy are rewarded with a rank at the end of each stage AND the game gives you a little gif of your flashiest kill that you can share on social media.

There are a couple of stages that change up the gameplay style such as a bike chase and a part where you're falling off a building but these really just amount to auto-scrollers where you shoot a set amount of dudes and maybe fight a boss.  Each stage also has its own little gimmick which means that you have to juggle planning the best way through the stage to not die and trying to find a way to get the most score.

My Friend Pedro, while a little on the short side, is a great game with quite a bit of replayability between hunting for ranks and extra difficulty modes and at 15 pounds that's a pretty good deal for what you're getting.  So if you're into things like Hotline Miami and other arcadey type, over the top action games, give this one a try. Oh, it's also avaliable on Switch.

AGDQ 2020 Vods You Should Watch

AGDQ 2020 concluded on Sunday and they finished with a whopping 3.1 million dollars for the prevent cancer foundation!  GDQ holds a special place in my heart with it being the event that inspired this very website and while the last couple of years haven't really held my attention too well, this year really knocked it out of the park.  Here are a couple of the runs (that I caught live) that I think you should check out once they get uploaded to YouTube in no particular order

1. Animorphs

Strictly speaking I don't think this was a part of the Awful Games block that they include every year but every crappy game they did a run of this year was highly entertaining.  This run, however, had me snort laughing at my office computer like a lunatic.  The commentary from the runner was funny, the crowd was super high energy and there was a part where the entire room is chanting "PUNCH THE SQUID!" over and over during a combat sequence.  Bonkers game, bonkers run, worth a watch 

2. Trauma Center New Blood

I love the Trauma Center games, a series about weird anime surgery where ALIENS HAVE TAKEN OVER HIS BODY and doctors that can slow down or freeze time using nothing but the power of raw concentration.  The only thing more bonkers than the plot of these games is the INSANE level of skill put forward by the runner who was donning a nice set of scrubs during the run.  Not only did he play the game and play it fast, but he managed to get an XS rank (the highest) on most of the missions.  If you don't know anything about TC then it might be a little confusing but if you even have a passing knowledge of this game its extremely easy to tell just how incredibly skilled and precise this runner was.

3. Ocarina of Time 100%

Just when I think OoT couldn't get any more broken someone comes along and proves me very wrong.  The 100% run this year had some extra thing in its category that I think was called "no source requirement", meaning that the runner was not obliged to go to each location in the game to actually get the items he needed to fulfill the 100% requirement.  This means he's using bottles to write spritual stones in his inventory, duping NPCs to get heart containers, all sorts of far out stuff.  I remember watching the any% run of this game being done in 20 minutes or so way back when and thinking "damn, you probably aren't getting crazier than that" only to have my jaw completely on the ground every year the play this game.  It was followed up by a glitch showcase as well which was equal parts interesting and hilarious.  

4. Super Mario World "One Mind"

Some of you may have heard of doing a game "2 players one controller" where one guy takes the buttons and one guy takes the movement and they must sync up their gameplay in order to achieve victory.  I even did a 2p1c marathon with my good buddy Pithoui a while back!  One Mind however is a different beast entirely.  It's a rom hack where each player is using their own pad but they are both controlling a single Mario.  Every so often the sprite will switch between the Mario sprite and the Luigi sprite to indicate which player is in control so when he's red its p1 and when he's green its p2.  The idea is that if you are of "one mind" then the run won't look any different from any other SMW 11 Exits run but if you try to do anything even slightly different it's going to start screwing things up.  Also when I say he swaps, I don't mean every couple of seconds or something, I mean he's swapping CONSTANTLY at high speeds.  It's a really interesting run and I can't quite explain it well so just go check it out for yourself.

5. Super Metroid Impossible

The finale run of the event and the title really isn't kidding when it says "impossible".  This is such an intense run that I don't really want to say any more about it, it's basically the Kaizo Mario of Metroid but it seems that some of the stuff in that game makes Kaizo Mario look like child's play.  It stands out for me because, I'll be honest with you, I don't give a rats ass about Super Metroid speed running and yet when I saw this run in motion I COULD. NOT. bring myself to look away.  It was so intense that I even clapped wildly at my TV when he finished, I just couldn't contain myself.

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So there's five runs to start you off, go and dig through those VODs on YouTube or Twitch or whatever and find some other games you like.  There's a whole bunch of runs that I caught live that I've not mentioned in this list that were awesome and probably a whole bunch that I missed live that I'm going to catch up with as soon as I hit "post"

Roll on SGDQ, I can't wait!

Why Silent Hill 2 Is So Damn Good

If you've not at least heard of Silent Hill 2 at this point in time you're either VERY new to gaming or have been living under a nuclear blast proofed rock for many many years.  When people say the words "horror game", at lot of people instantly bring to mind either Resident Evil or Silent Hill and if it's the latter they usually are thinking about the second one.  While my personal favorite Silent Hill is 3 because I really like the occult story line in that game, there's absolutely no denying the impact of SH2 on not just it's own series but the horror genre in general.

The reason that I feel it's so effective at what it does is that no matter what age you are, there is a level of horror to be found in Silent Hill 2 that will freak you out.  I remember when I first played it, I don't remember my exact age but it was around high school time I think.  My parents, every evening after work, would unwind and relax before making dinner and doing housework by chilling on the couch with a glass of wine and a bowl of nuts.  Meanwhile, I'd be on the PC or something gaming away or just generally wasting time.  Most of the time they would be watching TV but there was one occasion where the TV was vacant so I decided to jump on and the game I set on that evening was Silent Hill 2.  It was daylight outside, my family behind me and yet just the opening section of that game freaked me the fuck out.  It didn't need a dark, isolated room and a pair of headphones, it managed to scare me regardless of all that.  The spooky atmosphere and the creepy monsters managed to freak me out in a way that a lot of games didn't back then and even don't now.

Now when I was younger, scary monsters and things like slasher movies had quite an effect on me.  I was a bit easy to scare back then but as I got older that stopped happening.  The idea of a zombie apocalypse stopped being a terrible prospect, monsters jumping out of my closet became a laughable idea and ghosts flopping from my TV lost it's charm.  Admittedly, I'm very hard to please when it comes to horror.  I can enjoy a horror game or horror movie but it's a VERY rare occasion when I'll actually be scared.

But then I replayed Silent Hill 2 in my adult years and was JUST as freaked out now as I was back then.  What makes Silent Hill 2 isn't the fact that it managed to keep scaring me despite the fact I'd seen it before AND it pierced my adult cynicism but the fact it scared me for an entirely different reason.  Silent Hill 2 is about the main characters wife getting sick and dying, the plot twist (spoilers) being that he killed his wife because she was going to die anyway but mainly because he couldn't handle it anymore.  When I was younger this was just a "wow, how horrible" moment and then I went back to being scared of tables with tumors on them but playing it now it was THIS part that shook me to my very core.

I grew up and got married and one of the things that worries me to no end is the idea that one day I'll lose my wife.  When you play Silent Hill 2 and you see what James went through in that game your brain starts asking you questions that you don't have the answer for.  "What would you do if YOUR wife became terminally ill?", "would YOU be able to handle it?" and worst of all "is there a chance YOU might do what he did?!".  Of course you'd hope that you'd assume you'd be a good person and care for the one you love but Silent Hill shows you that very real, very human weakness that maybe you just aren't as strong as you think you are.

It's multi-faceted horror like this that makes Silent Hill as good as it is.  Doesn't matter if you're a teen scared of monsters or an adult scared of loss or even a lack of knowledge about yourself.  It's something I've not seen in a game EVER since Silent Hill 2.  I've seen games try, but never do it this masterfully. 

If you've never played it you ABSOLUTELY must.  Go do it right now

Since When Was Monster Hunter so Huge?

Monster Hunter World has come out recently and everyone around me is raving about it.  I'm not disagreeing with the raving either, Monster Hunter World looks absolutely fan-fucking-tastic, and while I've not bought it myself because it's like 8000 yen (when new games are typically around 6000) I can't wait to get my hands on it soon.

While it's nice to see a game series I enjoy get so much positive press, it's popularity is somewhat confusing to me though.  In Japan I know that Monster Hunter has always been big, you sort of just bump into it everywhere.  It might be a poster advertising Frontier in an internet cafe or some kind of promotional thing like a Monster Hunter themed design on a drink or something, it's the kind of thing that just pops up in every day life fairly often.  Now I can't speak for America but in the UK it was a different story completely, I only knew 2 people who also played Monster Hunter and apparently there was some little shop in London where hunters could go meet up to hunt stuff on Freedom Unite.

They were games that had good reviews but never much of a following.  I started to get into the series around the time of Freedom Unite and I remember having a grand old time with it.  However, back then I remember getting an armor set and posting a picture of it on Facebook to show some friends and a bunch of people chimed in with comments like "why are you such a sad fuck?" or "this game is for losers" etc.  It wasn't even a high level set, it was a shit early game thing that required no effort too, not that it really matters I guess.

I stuck with the series up to Monster Hunter Portable 3rd on the PSP (so 2008-2010 roughly) and in that time only met 1 other guy who was at all interested.  After that the series moved to 3DS which was all region locked and shit and I was living in Japan so I was sort of locked out of playing it unless I wanted to import or drop money on a Japanese 3DS but even with each DS release I didn't see anyone talking about it.

Now it's 2018, World gets released and suddenly everyone is all "MONSTER HUNTER OMG LOOKS SO GOOD!".  Like, where did this excitement come from?  I spent so much time looking for people with even a passing interest to no avail and now suddenly everyone's a fan? What the fuck happened?  It feels to me that some people are bandwagoning a bit here.  They actually don't know jack shit about the series past World but because of all the praise and publicity suddenly they love it now.

Still, I know I might be coming across as all bitter and sort of gatekeepy like "who are these filthy casuals playing MY game" but that's not the case.  It's confusing but it does make me happy to see a series I like getting so much praise and hype around it.  It all means that when I DO go and buy it I'll have plenty of people it with, finally.

Happy Hunting to newcomers and veterans alike!

Dx2 Shin Megami Tensei Liberation First Impressions

I never thought in my life I'd be impressed to the point of gushing HARD on a mobile game but it's finally happened and OF COURSE it's a fucking Shin Megami Tensei game that has me frothing at the mouth with excitement.

I've talked about it before but just in case I'll cover once again what Shin Megami Tensei is before I continue in case a new reader has stumbled across this post.  Shin Megami Tensei is a long running series of RPGs that has been going since the old NES days.  It has its roots in tile based dungeon crawling but as the series has progressed that style has dropped in and out.  The big gimmick of the series is the whole "demon negotiation" thing where you can convince your enemies to join your ranks and use their skills in order to reach the end.  The series has seen some massive success recently with it's spinoff series Persona and at some point a Shin Megami Tensei 5 has been cited for release on the Switch.  In a VERY basic way just think of it as sort of Grimdark Pokemon.

So I woke up on Sunday with a big fat hangover and grabbed my phone only to find that Dx2 SMT Liberation was on the front page of the Japanese app store and despite my pounding headache I did a little squee and downloaded it.  As far as mobile games go it's not all that different from any other RPG where you collect monsters and battle them but if you're a fan of the series, especially the mainline series, the look and feel of the game will have you hooked pretty quickly.  EVERYTHING you expect from a tried and true SMT game is present in this title just sort of simplified a little bit because it's on a phone now but presented in a way that makes it perfect for short burst plays on a train, bus or while you take a shit.

 I'm not going to go into too much detail about how it all works because there's A LOT going on and I've not levelled up enough to see it all but curiously the game has only 2 out of 5 stars on  the app store.  Addressing some of these complaints I've seen in the review section will help you to understand something about how the game works though so here I go.

The first big complaint I've seen is that they say (in Japanese) that the demons and the artwork look like crap.  The game has opted for the older SMT look as opposed to the more modern art direction that they have used in games like Persona so this is more of a taste thing.  I started the series with Lucifer's Call on PS2 when it was still using that sort of older look so it doesn't bother me really, this is just a taste thing but be aware the art style looks a bit "dated" which will be nostalgic for some and hard on the eyes for others.

The one thing I can't forgive though is people complaining about the fucking "gatcha".  If you don't play mobile games then a gatcha is the way most games give you new items or characters.  You pay a number of whatever currency it may be and the game randomly gives you a character.  If you're lucky you'll get a rare thing and if you're not lucky you won't, it's the main way these free to play RPGs make cash by making people pull lots of gatcha for mad rare shit.  These are usually a big part of mobile RPGs but in Liberations case it's not such a big thing.  The complaints state that the gatcha is too expensive and the rate of rare shit coming out is too low, which is fine I guess but that's not really how your supposed to expand your roster of demons.

As you play levels, occasionally a demon will offer to talk with you and you enter a negotiation.  If you complete the negotiation successfully the demon will join you, this is how SMT has worked basically since the beginning.  From there, you have you fuse the demons together to make new ones in order to strengthen your ranks and this is the main way that the player in Liberation gets rarer things.  For example today I took a 1* demon and a 2* demon and fused them into a 3* demon with some sick fire skills.  The gatcha does give you rare shit but the game wants you to focus on negotiation and fusion, you know, the thing where you actually have to understand how the game works, rather than just dumb luck.  While paying your way into the rarest demons is an option and probably how Sega plan to make profit, doing it the old fashioned way is preferable and series fans will probably enjoy this more than just "push button, receive demon".

I've never been this hooked by a mobile game before so if you're a SMT fan then absolutely try it out and if you've never played one before then this free outing into the mainline may be a good place to find your feet. 

Persona 5

Well it took a fucking age and a half but last weekend I finally beat Persona 5 and HOLY SHIT it's actually one of the best RPGs I've ever played.  I'll try to avoid spoilers as much as a can but there's a CHANCE that some may get dropped at some point, I'll mark them appropriately if I get into that but just be on your guard since people seem to be very uppity about spoilers for this game.

So here's a short version of my thoughts for people who are familiar with Persona and Shin Megami Tensei as a whole.  Persona 5 doesn't actually do anything particularly new with the franchise but it has an absolutely INSANE amount of polish on it.  If you like Persona you'll adore this game and if you are a mainline SMT snob then even you will find it hard not to get a kick out of this one.  It's just generally a damn good game.

For those that aren't familiar, Persona 5 is half monster breeding JRPG and half school life simulator. The story begins with our protagonist being set up for a crime he didn't commit and then getting sent to some shit school in Tokyo where everyone hates his guts.  From there he runs into a couple of other outcasts and they discover that they can enter an alternate universe where they dress like gentlemen thieves and can invade the hearts of certain people to change them from shitty people to not shitty people.  When you aren't doing that however, you have to go around making friends various folks around your school and Tokyo which has a knock on effect of making your Persona's stronger when you fuse them together to make new ones.  When you aren't doing THAT you can go around a number of places raising stats like charm, courage and academics in order to make you better at doing stuff/providing chances to deepen your friendships with the people mentioned in the sentence before.

The monster breeding, JRPG side of this game is where it really comes to life though.  When you are wandering around the hearts and minds of your targets you run into demons.  If you beat them up in just the right way and knock them down you can hold them at gunpoint and "negotiate" with them.  If you're negotiation is successful they will give you money, items or best of all join you so that you can use their skills in battle.  Once they've joined you can go inside a prison in order to put them under a guillotine and fuse them together to make new ones that are even better which in turn makes stealing  the minds of your targets much easier.

This is just a basic overview of the main two parts of the game but there's so much going on in P5 it'll make your fucking head spin.  There's no way I can do it justice in a short blog post like this, just go and play it.  The fact that I've not dedicated a paragraph to things I didn't like should say a lot about how I feel.  The only "complaint" I do have is that this game is fucking LOOONG but that wasn't really a negative for me and won't be for a lot of other people.  Just be warned though you will be probably at this one for at least 90 hours just for the main run through.

If you like RPGs, play P5
If you don't like RPGs, play P5 anyway
Just if you like games in general, play P5.  Just play fucking P5, right now

Yoko Taro: The Hero

Nier 2 is on the horizon and I'm hyped as all hell.  If you don't know what Nier is then I don't blame you because it was a little niche but it's easily one of the best games on the PS3/360 and while it wasn't so hot in the game play department, the story was awesome and the soundtrack was out of this world.  If you can get your hands on a copy of the first Nier game before Automata comes out then you totally should give it a go.

Right now he is working as the director for Nier Automata and this guy is a fucking nut.  He always comes out in a big mask shaped like one of his characters and all of his videos are a bit mental.  I watched an announcement this morning about how if you pre order Nier Automata you get a T-Shirt and it ended with him rolling around on the floor rubbing the T-Shirt over his body.  He's fucking great.

Apparently there was a bit of controversy with the upcoming game though because some people don't appreciate the main characters ass being on display.

Outfit is hot as fuck by the way.  A photoshopped image of the character appeared which showed the character climbing a ladder or something and you can see what looks like a butthole.  Of course, certain groups on sites like twitter got all upset and stuff except the image in question which you can find with a simple google search isn't actually from the game itself.  There's a company that makes porn games called Illusion and a lot of their games have really in depth character creation tools so someone made a model of the character and then used it to take the screenshot so at the end of the day these people are just getting upset over nothing.

But the absolute best thing to this whole situation is Yoko Taro's response

The general gist of the tweet is that because of the controversy a lot of rude pictures have been made of the main character but collecting them is a pain in the ass so he wants someone to send them to him in a ZIP file every week.

WHAT. A FUCKING. LAD.

There have been tons of examples of games being changed or censored in some way, especially during localization, because there are lots of crybabies on the internet nowadays who will get all up in arms if you dare to have an ass showing or a character in a bikini or some shit so it's nice to see a developer who embraces this side of things.  No artist should ever have to change their shit just because some prick on twitter or tumblr is "offended", these people should be told to fuck off and their stupid whining ignored.  According to his wiki page as well he likes to be blunt with his opinions and feels that fans deserve truth and honesty.

So let's take a moment to appreciate Yoko Taro, truly a hero that we all need right now.

The Last Guardian

So recently I just finished The Last Guardian and considering that we all waiting about 10 years for the bloody thing to actually get released I feel it would be rude to not say a few words about it.  I'll keep it as spoiler free as possible so don't worry if you've not played it.

So if you've been living under a rock and you don't know what the fuck you're looking at, The Last Guardian (Also known as The Man Eating Giant Eagle Trico in Japanese) is an action adventure/puzzle type affair created by the same guys that brought us Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.  Considering how good those games were, if you weren't running outside of your house to pick this shit up on release day then I feel like you might need to see a doctor for your severe brain problems and I don't say that lightly considering I usually hate buying shit day 1.

The game starts out with a nameless young boy stuck in a pit with a big dog, bird, griffin type thing all chained up and hurt and after you help it recover a little bit and free it from it's shackles you go on a grand adventure to escape the shit pit that you find yourself stuck in.  Escaping involves riding Trico around the environment, platforming and puzzle solving.  To hinder your escape there are sentient suits of armor trying to carry you off into blue doors and unless Trico is directly by your side encounters with these things should generally be feared. 

From a game play stand point I really enjoyed it but I can see why people would get frustrated with it.  The boy controls a little strange which will very occasionally cause you to fuck up platforming sections but if you aren't complete trash at playing games you'll adapt fairly quickly.  The real problem comes with controlling Trico who has been painstakingly programmed in order to act like a real animal.  That means that sometimes you'll know what to do in a given situation and you'll be using your gestures to try and make him do it but he'll just wander of and scratch his balls or stare at wood for a while instead.  While it is a sort of annoying aspect it does make it feel like your companion is an actual animal rather than just some AI helper than helps you scale large gaps.

I'm really glad a game like this game out now though because this is finally the thing that you can point to and be like "THIS is how you make a proper interactive "experience"".  Whenever anyone starts talking about these shitty walking simulators and they start raving about how good they are as "storytelling experiences" you can officially tell them to shut the fuck up and point to a nice modern game to rub their face in it.  The Last Guardian provides and experience far more powerful from anything in that genre and still manages to function as a game, it's brilliant. 

So with that said, you should just go and play The Last Guardian.  While it's a bit of a draining experience it's one you'll never forget and if you happen to be scared of heights like I am it'll probably be the best horror game of 2017.

My Top 3 Genres

I've been having a pretty shitty week so I'm just going to take a minute to gush about some genres that I really like because maybe posting something overly positive on here will help cheer me up a bit.  I'm sure I'll have something to rage about soon but for now I'm just going to gush.

1. Rhythm Games

One of the best things about living in Japan is the fact I'm surrounded on almost all sides in an arcade by the latest rhythm games.  I fucking love these things and I got my start playing them when I was pretty young and my local bowling alley in the UK got a DDR Euromix machine in.  These games were challenging, fun had sick music and back when I first got hooked the ability to draw a crowd. 

I lost interest a little bit during the peak of things like Guitar Hero and Rock Band because I didn't really like those games and getting hold of the ones I did like such as IIDX required importing shit from Japan and getting special controllers but once I moved here my interest came back HARD.  Admittedly I'm a sucker for shitty J-Pop sometimes and these games feature the catchiest shit J-Pop you've ever heard,  it's like a fucking dream.

The selection for these games out here is also insane, with new games popping up all the damn time and classic ones constantly getting updates.  Personal favorites include Jubeat, Sound Voltex, Chunithm and DDR but I'm always willing to try one of the weirder looking ones like MaiMai if I have some extra during my trip to the game center.

2. RPGs

Pretty much the genre that cemented my interest in gaming back in the Sega Saturn days I fucking love a good RPG.  I tend to not give a shit about all these differentiations like jRPG and wRPG that we make now a days because back when I was playing these things we just called 'em RPGs.  Didn't matter if it was Baldur's Gate or Final Fantasy, that shit was just an RPG.

I like these games for 2 main reasons.  One is the story because if an RPG has a really good plot behind it then it can be almost impossible to put down.  Granted, that a lot of the time finding an RPG with an actual well written story can be kind of hard but when you do it's pretty incredible.  However an RPG for me, especially a jRPG can be just as enjoyable if it has a cool combat system and lots of stuff going on in order to progress your characters.  I love the process of min/maxing characters in order to overcome a secret super boss or whatever, it just feels good to have to know a game that intimately in order to succeed. 

Some of my favorites for this one include Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shadow Hearts and more recently The Banner Saga.  It's a shame that the genre is so overcrowded now with all this moe shit in Japan but they are still pretty fun from a game play stand point.

3. The Horror Game

 

I'm a big fan of horror anything really, but horror games especially are my favorite way to experience the genre.  It's hard to make some general comments about what makes the genre as a whole so great because that kind of varies from series and series and game to game.  The reason why Silent Hill is so damn good is different to the reason why Project Zero is so good. 

Granted, the genre does have a lot of shit in it like that weird The Ring game on Dreamcast and that X Files game on PS2 that I currently forget the name of but the good horror games really are fucking awesome.  There's nothing quite like playing Silent Hill 2 for the first time or the rush of encountering your first ghost with the camera in Project Zero.

While the AAA horror game has kind of died it's luckily being kept alive by a good number of indie developers.  Things like the first Amnesia game, Penumbra, Into the Gloom and Lone Survivor show that there still are a number of game developers out there who know how to produce a good scare every so often and while it's niche as fuck the fan base for the horror genre is pretty dedicated. 

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So there you have it folks, my top 3 genres.  It's cool if you don't give a fuck but writing some positive stuff about some games that I love really helped cheer me up so I'll be back to my usual rage pretty soon. 

Spooky's House of Jump Scares

You know, when I download a title from Steam that costs exactly £0 and has a name like this I'm not exactly expecting a masterpiece.  Hell, I'm not really expecting anything more than a couple of horror themed jokes and a game that you can finish in about 10 minutes. 

Well I was fucking wrong here

Spooky's House of Jump Scares is a strange game.  I've actually forgotten what the plot is even though it scrolls for you every time you load up the game but I think it's about someone with an interest in history hearing some stories about this old house and going in to check it out.  As soon as you get inside you are confronted by Spooky, a cute ghost that tells you that the house contains 1000 rooms and challenges you to get to the end of it.

Game play for this game is very simple, walk through a bunch of corridors and press E when you get to the end of each room.  Occasionally, the game will throw a puzzle or two at you and you must spend a little time to solve those but most of them are just things like "find the key" or "read the bit of paper with the door code on it".  While the game play isn't particularly great and the story isn't anything new or interesting it's the way the game delivers it horror that makes it a real success.

Now the horror aspect to this game is really hard to talk about because part of the reason it's so effective is that you aren't expecting it to take the turn that it does.  The first few levels are populated with cute little cardboard cutouts of  animals and cartoon skeletons but don't let that put you off because if you press on you really are in for a bit of a surprise.  I really don't want to say any more than that but let's just say that by the end of the game, even those cute little cut outs had me jumping in my chair a little bit.

The game also features multiple endings which adds some replay value but a single play through of this games 1000 rooms can be a little draining so getting the other ending is not something that I have got around to yet.

The game is free to download and play on Steam and I would encourage you to give it a go.  It's a hard game to talk about but don't read anything other than this going in and you're in for a really good time.  Sometimes it's the simple stuff that gets under your skin the most.

Final Fantasy 6

Well, my apologies for being slow as fuck but last night I finally beat Final Fantasy 6 on Stream so it's about that time where I come here to say a few words about it.  This won't be a particularly long post since it's FF6 and basically everyone ever has played it but I'll take some time to share a few thoughts.

As far as classic 16-bit RPGs go, Final Fantasy 6 is up there as one of the best and for damn good reason.  Everything about this game is awesome from the story to the game play and the reason it took so long to beat wasn't because of a lack of enjoyment but I just got heavily distracted by speed running other things.

Your adventure starts out with a group of rebels battling an empire but this part of the game really only serves as a sort of lengthy tutorial for what's to come.  Eventually you hit a point where shit hits the fan really hard and after following a plot rail for a short time you are eventually just given a big giant world to explore and it's entirely up to you where to go.  The open nature of this game is quite a stark difference to a great deal of the series that has you on a plot rail for 99% of the game and then a few side quests near the end.  This game is more like, plot rail for about 50% of the game and then everything else is side quests and that's awesome.

Maybe it's because I'm a huge dumbass but I needed quite a lot of help to find various things hidden within the game.  There are characters in the various towns and cities to give you hints but some things I don't see how you could work out without some dumb luck.  I'm sure there are some really hardcore players that could tell me how I'm wrong on this point but as a casual player I found the entry to a few of the side quests really weird.

Once you are done with a few of the quests you end up being pretty much unstoppable however that doesn't make the final area of the game a walk in the park.  The game makes you split up your team into 3 groups so if, like me, you were only really focusing on 4 members in your main party the final dungeon ends up being a real pain in the butt.  However I'm going to label this as a good thing because it forced me to put my thinking cap on and really plan out how I was going to progress rather than just gear up and stomp the final dungeon with no effort at all.

Aside from the story, great game play and fun flow and pacing the game also sports some excellent music and great visuals.  You can tell whoever put the sprites and tile sets together for this game really wanted to get the most of that SNES cart and I guarantee you that almost every gamer worth their salt knows at least 1 or 2 tracks from the OST just from off the top of their head.

So, onward to Final Fantasy 7 and while you're waiting for my marathon to start why not go give FF6 a whirl yourself?  If you've not played it already then you absolutely NEED to go do it, right now.

Finally Tried The Oculus

So today I was walking around town doing some retro game shopping (video incoming) when I discovered a building that was running some Oculus Rift demos for people to just line up and try out.  At the time me and my group were fucking starving but of course we put that aside to test out some VR goodness.

For those that don't know, the Oculus Rift is a VR headset type thing and it's being used to do all sorts of cool gaming shit with.  Think the Virtual Boy but with some really good displays instead of just some red and black faux 3D bullshit going on.  It also doesn't give you nasty headaches after a short time of use or at least not to my knowledge.

The demo that I was able to try today wasn't a game as such more like a little first person movie of a roller coaster.  The roller coaster wasn't just any kind of roller coaster though, it was impossibly high and did all sorts of weird twists and turns that would kill you if put into a real coaster. 

Before I continue I would just like to say that I have a fear of heights and therefore I dislike roller coasters greatly.  When I was lining up to try the thing I could feel myself getting nervous despite that fact that I knew it was just a wooden chair in a dark room.  Just to give you a good idea of how bad I am, last time I went to Universal Studios Japan I freaked my shit on the Snoopy themed roller coaster designed for children, it's not good.

Anyway, I put the Rift on feeling only slightly apprehensive and I was met with a view of the coaster making it's climb.  I could turn my head and view the surroundings which was really cool and as it got to the top I got that same feeling in my chest that I get when I ride the real thing.  I found myself grabbing the chair pretty tightly despite the fact that I knew it wasn't real.  Once it started to fall the feeling subsided and it was a good bit of fun but I thought the fact that it was able to get that kind of response out of me pretty amazing.  At the end of the ride the coaster flies off a slope where the guy showcasing the demo then runs behind you and rocks your chair back to simulate the feeling.  I freaked out a little there more because I felt like I was going to fall off rather than the feeling caused by the rift.

Still though, if this is VR in it's early stages then things are going to get really good when the thing is released to the public.  Playing a horror game or a First Person Shooter in this thing will be mind blowingly fun and I can't wait to try.  If VR really is the future then sign me up!

South Park: The Stick of Truth

This game got a lot of praise and was talked about rather highly upon its release.  This usually makes me far more harsh on a game and it's a bad habit because it can have a habit of ruining a title for me.  However, South Park is one of those games that easily lives up to all its praise and it's absolutely worth playing.

The game revolves around a "new kid" who comes to South Park and he is quickly swept up in some kind of LARP, Dungeons and Dragons type thing being run by the cast of the show.  While all this is going on, some kind of terrible government plot is happening and it is up to you and your friends to stop it.  The story to this game is essentially one big episode of the show converted into a simple RPG game so fans of the show will know what to expect from the game plot wise.

Game play wise, I find Stick of Truth to be a little lacking.  It's an extremely simple RPG with some Mario RPG esque timing things attached to the various attacks to make them hit harder or apply an effect.  I played as a Mage and found all the combat to be stupidly easy to the point where my buddy character was completely pointless.

That said though, while Stick's game play is very simplistic it makes up for by having tons of character and being genuinely funny.  There are many little nods to old episodes of the show while also having a ton of it's own humor.  It has been a long time since I genuinely laughed out loud playing a video game but a few of the moments had me hitting the pause button so I could get my shit together.

There's also a hell of a lot to do in this game.  There are tons of side quests and things to collect.  If you are a perfectionist then you will definitely get quite a significant amount of play time out of this game.  Not to mention that there are 4 playable classes (warrior, mage, thief and Jew) that all have their own unique skill sets.  The animations on some of the attacks alone warrant multiple playthroughs and have a pretty big effect on how you tackle certain situations.

I could talk for fucking ages about how good the game is and why you'd probably love it but I'd be here all day if I did that.  It would be easier to say that if you are a fan of South Park then you absolutely WILL like this game.  If you're not familiar with South Park then this isn't a good place to start but there is enough for a newcomer to enjoy too.  If you don't like South Park or you're looking for a deeper RPG experience, then you're clearly an idiot looking in the wrong place. 

Euro Truck Simulator 2 Roundup

The 24 hour marathon of Euro Truck Simulator 2 was completed last weekend so I thought I'd say some stuff about what went down.  The marathon was both a great success and a huge failure but that aside it was a surprisingly good time.

First I want to say a couple of things about the game itself.  I found Euro Truck Simulator 2 to be a surprisingly good game.  I thought it would be nothing but driving round Europe in a truck and while that does make up about 90% of the game there's a bunch of other stuff about running a delivery business.  You can buy your own trucks, hire people, set up garages round Europe and all sorts of other cool stuff that make the game quite enjoyable.  To be brutally honest, if I wasn't playing it for such a long period of time, it would be the kind of game that would be fun to play on a lazy Sunday afternoon or something.

OK! Now to talk about the marathon.  I mentioned that it was a huge failure so I'll get the negative stuff out of the way first.  The only reason I say it was a huge failure is because I didn't make it to the end of the 24 hour period.  This was mainly due to the fact that I put up an incentive to start boozing while playing and do a bit of virtual drunk driving (don't ever do it for real folks!).  I've done two 24 hour marathons before this and made it to the end just fine but this marathon taught me that going 24 hours while drunk is basically impossible, at least for me.  A combination of being drunk, tired and pissed off with my constant failure at the game itself caused me to throw in the towel.  Luckily I struck up a deal with the original donator for the incentive and paid a punishment donation for each missing hour (£50)

Which then leads me nicely into the huge success part of the marathon.  First I'd like to give a big thank you to everyone who watched and an even bigger thank you to everyone who donated.  If it wasn't for the support of all the viewers it would have been unbearable torture.  The marathon raised £330 for the Alzheimer's Society which makes it, if memory serves, the most donated for marathon yet!

So once again, huge thank yous to all you wonderful people who dropped in and supported.  Big shout outs to my buddy who sat behind me for a significant part of the marathon to keep my sane.  I hope you all continue to support Identity Gaming and the Alzheimer's Society! 

I'm planning a little mini marathon to make up for the lost time and I'm thinking of an idea for the next 24 hour marathon, this time with no booze.

Silent Hill

It's kind of criminal that I've not made this post sooner.  All the speed runs I do, all the time I've spent talking about the latest entries in the series and how shit they are.  Hell, I've even talked about the fucking PLAY NOVEL more than I have the actual game, so it's about time Silent Hill got some love.

I picked the PAL box art for the post picture because the American box art is shit.  Even the Japanese box art is better and that's just a tile wall with a little bit of blood on it.

Silent Hill is one of those games that basically everyone with even a passing interest in the medium of video games is aware of.  It's one of the big grand daddies of the horror genre and is famous for being WAY scarier than any of the other survival horror games.  Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark and all that stuff were kind of scary, but Silent Hill was the first instance I ever saw anyone put down a controller and be like "whoa man, this shit..."

The plot involves Harry Mason on his quest through Silent Hill to rescue his daughter.  Not too long after the game starts you get caught up in all sorts of shit involving demons, shifts into a nightmare and a satanic cult.  I'm not going to go into any length about the story because there are people who have dedicated significant amount of time picking apart this games wonderful plot and if I did it in this post it would be way WAYYYYY too fucking long.

The game uses the old tank control scheme that games like Resident Evil used, except it was a little more developed.  For example, readying your weapon didn't lock you to the floor and you were free to maneuver with your gun drawn or big fuck off pipe ready to swing.  This made melee combat an actual option whereas other games in the genre, locking yourself in place to slice at something was guaranteed death for the player.

The game also had a ton of replay value since there was a few secret weapons to unlock and an extra ending to be acquired upon fulfilling certain conditions in a New Game +.  The game also had 4 normal endings so that's at least 5 playthroughs where you will end up with something different after the final boss has been toppled. 

I mean, I could talk about this game for fucking hours, it's just that good.  If I tried to go through every single goddamn thing that I enjoyed about Silent Hill then this post would be really goddamn long and I don't think anyone wants to read thousands of words of gush.   So instead, just go and play the fucking thing.  Dig it out of a closet, borrow it off a friend, buy it off PSN, I don't care how you play it just fucking play it.  The new Silent Hill games are all shit so if you've never experienced it before and you want to see just how strong a start this series had, get on it ASAP.

Silent Hill's 1,2 and 3 are THE BEST horror games to date, bar none, fight me.

Just in case, if you're interested in seeing my current fastest speed run (39:39 IGT) then the video is below.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

The Binding of Isaac was one of the first games I wrote about on this blog way back when and recently a new version came out and it's fucking fantastic!  BoI:Rebirth is one of the ONLY games I have pre loaded off steam in years so that should be a good indication of just how good it is.

The Binding of Isaac is a rougelike game about a small child trying to escape from his mother killing him.  You must make your way through a randomly generated dungeon picking up items and killing enemies with your tears.  Like most games in the genre, permadeath is a large part of the game so if you die then you have to start all over again with everything reset to its starting values.  As you play and have successful runs, you start to unlock stuff like characters, challenges, items, locations and much much more. 

Basically, if you were a fan of the first Binding of Isaac it's essentially more of the same thing.  It's basically another expansion back disguised as a full game but the amount of additional content and fixes to certain things is so huge that it's absolutely worth the price of admission.

The Binding of Isaac is one of those games that just eats your fucking time without you even realising it.  You'll fire it up thinking "oh I'll just have a quick run or 2" and then 6 hours later your still playing it with absolutely no signs of stopping.  While the game doesn't contain any multi player features, if you have a group of friends to share stories of your successes or complete bullshit deaths the game becomes even more fun because everyone has their own unique story about some shit that happened to them.

Rebirth takes sharing the stories to a whole new level though because now you can share your dungeon seed with another person and they can re-live your run for themselves.  When you pause the game you are given a 6 character code that you can pass on to someone else and when they input it they will be given the exact same dungeon you were in.  However playing with a seed doesn't count towards unlocks or anything like that but you can still challenge each other if you feel like you had a particularly tough time.

If you aren't already in on the whole Isaac thing, go and buy the game right fucking now.  I'm serious, just close this window, fire up steam and fucking buy it.  Binding of Isaac is some of the most fun I've had with any indie game ever and it's the kind of game basically everyone can enjoy.

Terra Battle First Impressions

It's not every day that I'd be so quick to jump on here and talk about a game for iOS but goddamn, Terra Battle is pretty fucking good.

The story goes that one day I was having trouble updating the apps on my phone.  While trying to work out the problem I took the the app store to see if I could still download stuff.  Terra Battle just happened to be at the top of the list so I hit download and it worked.  After fixing the problem I thought I should give the thing a go so I fired it up and the first words I see on my phone screen are "Mistwalker"

I was stunned, I had no idea Mistwalker had made a game for iPhones and what was even more stunning is that it was released (at time of writing) last Thursday.  For those that don't know Mistwalker is a company founded by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the guy who headed Final Fantasy back when it was good.  They came in strong with Lost Odyssey on the Xbox 360 and followed it up with The Last Story on Wii but after that I lost track of them.  Turns out they've been making games for iOS and Terra Battle is their latest release.

Terra Battle is kind of like every other RPG on iOS right now in the sense that you collect characters, put them in a team of 6 and then play some kind of puzzle game to fight monsters and level them up.  What I like about Terra Battle is that the puzzle involved isn't just something stupid like matching gems but it involves positioning units around a board to make attacks by flanking an enemy.  To add a little bit of extra strategy, units on the same row as an attacking unit can get a little extra hit in and all units come with skills that are activated by chaining attacks together.

The one thing I like about this game is that I'm not being bogged down in characters right from the get go.  One of the things I don't like about games like Puzzle and Dragon or Love Live is that you get so much shit and no "box" space to put it all in that a lot of the characters feel like junk.  In Terra Battle you are given small numbers of units and you have to carefully arrange a party together to effectively get through a level.

Right now the game is quite bare bones but this is by design as Sakaguchi has come up with this idea of "download starter".  Apparently he has stated that he likes the sense of community that comes around via something like Kickstarter but doesn't like the idea of fans directly financing the game.  Instead content is released based on download numbers.  Given that, as of right now, Terra Battle is the first game I see in the app store on my iPhone, I can see this game going pretty far.

Sakaguchi is a man who knows what he's doing when it comes to making games and making fans happy so give this game a go.  You have nothing to lose really except maybe an hour or two and the only complaint I have about the game thus far is the translation is a bit wonky.  Plus if you download and give it a go you're helping me get more content, so get downloading.

Shovel Knight

I know that as this game was being made there were quite a few people who were really excited for its release.  I, on the other hand, tend not to follow game release after their initial announcement and I'm glad I didn't because Shovel Knight was one of the best surprises I've had all year.

Shovel Knight is a retro-esque 2D side scrolling platformer about the titular character trying to rid the world of evil and unravel the mystery of his companion Shield Knight.  Over the course of his journey he must do battle with a bunch of other knights, some wandering travelers and eventually an evil sorceress who has laid claim to the lands.  To be brutally honest the story is very much in the back seat position for this game but it's mildly entertaining and worth reading it's few cut scenes just for that little bit of extra enjoyment.

The game play is where this game really shines with it's mix of Mario 3, Megaman and Castlevania.  It takes the map thing from Mario 3 and uses all the same things such as spawning baddies that give gold and items as well as extra little challenge stages for the players that want to push their skills the extra mile.  It takes an item system that's SORT OF Zelda-ish but more like Castlevania.  You can equip items such as an arching anchor and a talisman that gives limited invincibility at the cost of mana points in the same way you use items with hearts in Castlevania.  Finally, the game is kind of presented like an old school Megaman game in it's level design and in the sense that every area comes with 3 bosses that you can pick in any order.

The absolute best thing about this game is it's level design.  Every level is challenging but without being bullshit hard.  Every time I died it felt like it was MY fault rather than the fault of some stupid bullshit making me fall down a pit or get crushed whatever.  If you do die there is a Dark Souls-ish system where you drop some of your gold and if you can make it back to where you died then you can reclaim your lost cash.  Later on in the game you get knocked back enough to the point where it feels like there's a decent punishment for death but without being overly harsh on the player.

It's this last part of the post where I'd usually say something bad about Shovel Knight but to be brutally honest with you I can't think of anything bad to say about it right now.  It's not a 100%, 10/10 perfect game but it's so damn good that any of it's flaws are so minor that you'll be having too much fun to notice.

So if you own any of the systems that Shovel Knight is on, go and buy it.  I'm fucking serious, buy the shit out of it because games with this much quality deserve to be supported.  It's not very often that a game is so good that I'm lost for words when it comes to criticism so take that as an indication of how much you should buy the damn thing.

Rayman Origins

Well shit, I was late to this party.  But better late than never, right?

Rayman Origins is a game I bought a long long time ago on my Vita but because of Project Diva F and other games in my backlog, I only got around to playing it recently.  However I'm glad I did eventually decide to pop it in because Rayman Origins is one of  the best platformers that I've ever played.

The game is extremely thin on story but given the genre and the series that it's part of then it can be forgiven.  Basically, Rayman and his buddies are sleeping and their constant snoring pisses off a bunch of twats that live underground.  These twats start causing trouble and it's up to you to put them back in their place.

The gameplay in Rayman Origins is fucking amazing.  It's fast, fluid, responsive and navigating your way through the stages is just satisfying.  If you get killed it doesn't feel like the game was being bullshit, it's because YOU fucked up and the only way to unfuck yourself is to get good.  The levels also contains a little bit of exploration as you hunt for Lums (little fairy things) and secret cages.

There is a ton of content in this game too so you can get a hell of a lot of play time out of it.  Every level has a bunch of Electoons that need to be rescued, kind of like Rayman 1.  On each stage there is 1 set of electoons at the end of the stage and 2 hidden in the level.  Upon finishing the stage the game counts the Lums you found and there are 2 more available that way.  On top of that, there's an extra electoon for speed running the stage within a time limit.  This sounds like it would be bullshit because it means you have to play through every stage twice but it's not because the way you approach a stage normally and the way you approach it to do it fast are totally different.

This isn't true for every level in the game as there are some stages that mix up the formula a bit, but generally speaking that's how it works.

Then on top of all that, there are special stages where you find little red gems from chests.  Collecting all 10 of these gems unlocks a hidden world that is pretty fucking challenging and sort of acts like a final exam for all that skill you built up over the course of the game.

But challenge is the major problem I have with Rayman Origins, it's too fuckin' easy.  I blasted through all the stages and got all the Electoons first try with very little resistance.  The game grows some balls in the final and secret levels but the challenge comes in way too late and there isn't enough of it to satisfy masochists like myself.  Still though, the games easiness doesn't really affect it too badly because generally speaking the thing is just outright fun to play.

Finally there is multiplayer, but I didn't do it even once so I can't comment.

So yeah, go play it if you haven't already, it's awesome.