Metal Gear Acid

Even though I beat this game a while ago, it's taken me more than a month to actually get on the blog and talk about it because it's just a bit shit.

"No way!" I hear you say, "There's no way in hell a bad Metal Gear Solid exists!".  Well before you start getting upset with me for slagging off Metal Gear, I'm not, I love Metal Gear but MGA is a fucking mess.

Story wise it's a pretty classic Metal Gear setup.  There's a bunch of terrorists who have invaded some place and they are after something that isn't called Metal Gear but is blatantly Metal Gear and it's up to you to stop it.  Since I'm writing this so long after finishing it I've kind of forgotten some of the plot.  Mainly it involved Metal Gear, some shit on a plane and child experimentation but the fact I've forgotten the plot might clue you in to just how forgettable and lack luster it was.

But the story isn't the reason Metal Gear Acid is a fucking mess.  No, the story is just a bit dull but it's the gameplay that really makes this game just unenjoyable.  In case you're not aware, Metal Gear Acid isn't played like any other Metal Gear game because this is a card game.

That's right, a fucking turn based CARD game.

 You have a deck of cards that fall into different categories such as weapons, items, actions and special effects that are represented by different characters.  Every card is used to move around the board and lets you move 3 spaces, while special movement cards will allow for greater movement.  Every card also has a cost, so the better cards cost more to use and that means that you have to wait longer between each turn.

Now the reason this game is a load of bullshit is because everything you do is dependant on what kind of cards you draw.  It's fine at first but there are certain points in the game where you NEED specific cards to do specific things and if you don't get lucky and draw your card then you'll just be sat there discarding shit for 5 or 6 turns until the card you eventually DO want shows up.

An example of this is there is a level where you are required to snipe flying cameras so that you can cross a bridge.  By that point in the game I had maybe 3 or 4 sniper rifle cards available, but I lost the mission multiple times because the game wouldn't give me the fucking cards to use, so they would just eventually move into my half of the map and spot me, calling a bunch of guards to enter the level and fuck me all up.

Now I guess you could just say to me "well why didn't you go and get more sniper rifles then?", but the problem with that is the only way to really get more cards quickly without having to tediously grind out old levels is to buy booster packs.  A booster pack gives you 3 cards, and usually it gives you 3 shit ones.  Through my entire playthrough I only got one rare card in a booster and the rare was so shit that I ended up never using it.  The one good thing about the boosters is the variety in the packs.  For example, at the start you only have access to Metal Gear Solid 1 themed cards, but as you progress you unlock MGS2, 3 and even Metal Gear 1 and 2 themed cards, so if you're the kind of person who enjoys collecting digital cards then you have a lot to work with here.

I'm being overly harsh when I say Metal Gear Acid is a fucking mess, but it's certainly frustrating and sometimes VERY unfun to play with certain levels being made an absolute chore by the games fucking stupid card thing.  Still though, it's a unique take on the Metal Gear series and maybe the sequel that I've not played is way better, so it's at least worth a quick go on your PSP.

Not Old Enough for War

So recently I've been playing a bit of Valkyria Chronicles.   For those that don't know, Valkyria Chronicles is a turn based strategy game set in what is essentially an anime version of World War 2.

As good as the game is I found the above in the person in the personnel files and I couldn't help but to frown at yet another token underage character in a Japanese game.  Just talking about her, she's fucking 12 years old, and for some reason it's OK for her to fight in a war where at any moment she could have her head blown off.  I really wish there was some kind of cut scene to show the justification for allowing her into the army.

But it's not just Valkyria Chronicles, basically every Japanese game I've ever played has some kind of token little kid and they are usually super annoying.  In the war game it's just the concept that blows my mind, but basically every child character in every Japanese game is famous for being annoying.

Just go look up the "Dinner dinner" scene from Infinite Undiscovery to get just a glimpse of what I'm talking about.  Seriously Japan, stop this shit.

Sometimes Rage Quitting is OK

I hate to leave a game unfinished, so a rage quit for me is quite a rare thing.  Even games I have rage quit in the past and I know are complete garbage I have come back to at a later date, which is what makes this particular ragequit even more painful.

Yep, this is it folks, this is the last post you will ever see regarding R-Type Tactics for the PSP.

This is the last time you will see that R-Type Tactics logo for a long, LONG time.  This game is fucking arse and I can't be bothered anymore.  But what's strange about this ragequit is that it didn't come from a failure of a mission, or a bullshit enemy (of which there are a few) or anything like that, but I'm just....bored.

It's actually quite rare for me to get just flat out bored of a game, usually I quit for one of the reasons I listed above but this, this is just boring as all hell.  All the backgrounds look the same, the game is way, and I mean WAY too fucking easy but at the same time, it's also complete dogshit.

The mission that made me just turn off the game and never look back was in the 3rd chapter of the game, where you have to go around a black hole and kill an enemy flagship.  This mission isn't hard, AT ALL! the game makes a big deal of the black hole being super dangerous but it doesn't do anything, it just costs more movement to go near it.  There are arrows on the tiles that indicate that it would pull your ships that direction, but it doesn't actually seem to do anything.

On top of that, there are these bullshit enemy's that can fire lasers that one shot and the charge time for those lasers are ONE FUCKING TURN.  That means, every turn, unless you hit them on your turn, they can just blast the shit out of your armada.   That said, the mission is still a piece of piss and I cleared it no problem, just took a few more casualties than usual.

So yeah, no more of this crap.  Boring levels, boring ships, boring EVERYTHING.  Maybe I'll try again in 2 or 3 years...

Now that's some bullshit #2: Palette Swaps!

God.....

Oh god....

I just want it to end...........

But seriously, the reason I come with another rant about video game bullshit is because of R-Type Tactics AGAIN!  Fuck this goddamn game, it's so fucking boring but I'm too far in to just fucking quit, it has to be over soon anyway.

More to the point, I'm gonna be talking about palette swaps in games and why they're a load of shit.  Basically, look at the picture at the top, every single one of those are DIFFERENT FUCKING CHARACTERS in Mortal Kombat.  Now don't get me wrong, I like Mortal Kombat, but that is a load of ass right there.

You see, my problem with palette swaps is that it's just fucking lazy.  Sure, OK, maybe I'm being a bit harsh using Mortal Kombat as an example, they were trying to do the whole digitised thing and I guess they just didn't have the money to hire 6 different dudes as well as pay for 6 differently coloured outfits.  That said, this is still something that goes on TODAY! fucking palette swapping lazy bullshit.

In fact, while I'm ranting I'm thinking I can maybe forgive it in most fighters because a palette swap there is just a different outfit or whatever, but this goes on all the time in shit like RPG's.  If your going to make an RPG, the whole point is to have an interesting world to explore, and of course, in a big world of adventure every area is going to have its own species of monsters to battle, right? 

FUCKING! WRONG! Lots of RPG's do it but the worst offender I can think off the top of my damn head is the Final Fantasy series.  Now before anyone gets all upset that I'm ripping on Final Fantasy, I like the series.  Hell, despite being pretty stupid I did enjoy playing XIII and I've played pretty much every one to the end despite the heavily retarded stories in some of the later ones.  The one exception to this is 8...but that's another post for another time.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, RPG palette swap lazy bullshit.

 This little blue wanker here is a Flan, a common enemy in pretty much every Final Fantasy and this little bastard represents everything that's wrong with some design choices in RPG's.   These guys pop up in pretty much every single area but they change colour depending on what the area looks like (E.g Red ones in a fire area, blue ones in an ice area etc.) and it's just a stock, shitty enemy so that Square doesn't have to put that extra bit of effort designing an actual interesting fucking enemy.

But it's not just Final Fantasy that has a shit enemy like this that the devs can just lazily slap a new coat of paint on, it's pretty much every RPG ever.  But you know what? I wouldn't mind it so much if it was just the same enemy, but I'm supposed to accept that putting a new lick of paint on an old enemy makes it a new one?! yeah, fuck that!  But you know what? it's not RPGs that really bother me that much.  Sure, I'm ranting here but I don't foam at the mouth whenever I see an RPG palette swap monster really, what pissed me off today, was a boss in R-Type Tactics.

First of all, this boss pops up in the final stage of the 2nd chapter of the game.

First of all, all these fucking levels are the same.  Long boring tunnels filled with the same enemies and you can get through them by using the same strategy every goddamn time.  But the boring level design isn't what annoys me, that just puts me to sleep.

No what annoys me, is this!

That alien, is the iconic R-Type enemy.  I mean a quick google image search of "R-Type" brings up that guy, people recognise this boss quite easily.  So yeah, it was cool to fight him once near the start of the game as the first major boss battle in Tactics.

But then he turns up again, but purple.  Same attacks, same fucking stats, same EVERYTHING, he's just fucking purple, and this is what really got me.  So I did a wiki search, here is a list of the games in the R-Type series

• R-Type II (1989)
• Armed Police Unit Gallop (1991)
• Super R-Type (1991)
• R-Type Leo (1992)
• R-Type III: The Third Lightning (1993)
• R-Type Delta (1998) / US version (1999)
• R-Type Final (2003)
• R-Type Command (2007)
• R-Type Dimensions (2009)
• R-Type Tactics II: Operation Bitter Chocolate (2009)

(Good old wikipedia)

LOOK AT ALL THOSE FUCKING GAMES! Are you seriously telling me, that they couldn't have picked ANY of those games from the series and put a different boss at the end of that boring warp tunnel segment?! 

So they round off one of the most boring sections of any video ever with a boss recolour, well fucking done IREM, you're officially more boring than watching grey paint dry.

Oh and before I finish this stupid little rant, I can't believe R-Type tactics got a sequel, I feel compelled to track it down and play it just to see how they can further ruin a awesome shooter series by turning it into a shitty turn based strategy game.

R-Type Tactics Update!

So you remember a few days ago I made a post on what I thought so far about R-Type Tactics and how I thought I liked it but when I thought about it the game is actually a pile of shit?  Well even if you don't I've been playing it a bit more and I've come across something that has annoyed me even more.

You see, the amount I've actually been playing this game is quite low, partly due to being distracted by playing League of Legends recently, and partly due to the game being huge amounts of horseshit.

Anyway, lets play a little game of spot the difference, look at these 3 pictures I just took.

Can you spot the difference? NO YOU CAN'T IT'S THE SAME FUCKING LEVEL and yes, these are from 3 different missions.  Sure, the purple crap that makes you move slower changes shape over the course of the stages, but that does NOT make it a different goddamn mission.  Oh, and on top of that, the music is the same in each of these stages. 

This is just lazy on the part of the developer.  Sure, I'm warping a huge distance into the Bydo homeworld, but you do not need to convey the distance by repeating the same stage 3 times.  I've not even bothered to play the third one yet so there may even be a 4th.

I want to beat it, I don't like to leave things unfinished, but I'm THIS close to sodding the whole thing and just starting on Dracula X Chronicles instead.

Now that's some BULLSHIT! #1: Nasty Fog of War discoveries

Well this is a segment I'm going to start periodically on here called "Now that's some BULLSHIT".  What this segment is, is little rants from me about shit that happens in games or whatever that makes you just throw you arms up in the air and call bullshit.  There is lots of instances of this both in and out of gaming, so we're probably going to hit a pretty high number for these one day.

Anyway, the first piece of bullshit I'm going to needlessly get angry about today, is the nasty shit you'll find in fog of war in some strategy games, mainly turn based ones.

What I mean by a nasty fog of war discovery is when your playing something like Advance Wars or Civilisation or something like that, and you're happily uncovering the fog of war when BAM! one of the other assholes on the other team has some kind of superweapon that just wrecks your shit.  This is double bad if the game does that thing of letting the enemy get off a free turn because you blundered into it like a retard.

Now, I'm going to make this clear right now.  If you're playing something like starcraft 2, and you walk into some kind of Protoss deathball (or a big fuck off army of tough shit for all you none SC2 players), that's YOUR goddamn fault.  You didn't scout it well enough and it's your own dumbass that caused you to lose that game.

(Unrelated picture lol)

 No, what I'm talking about is like shit that happened to me today when slogging through R-Type tactics.  I'm scouting safely, making sure I can see whats ahead of me before I go throwing all my ships to the grinder, when I encounter some enemy ships.  I'm dealing with them in a manner that allows me to keep my scout ship safe, when all of a sudden a HUGE FUCKING CHARGE WAVE comes out of the fog and just destroys 2 of my units. 

Whats the point of having a scout unit if it can't effectively scout the HUGE 10 panel ship blasting me from the fog!  Now I'm not saying Fog of War is a bad thing, it adds challenge and depth and shit would be too easy without it, but that right there, is some bullshit! 

Anyone who plays strategy games has had this moment at least once, where there has been some unseeable, unexpected sack of arse waiting 3 like spaces of a map away.  So fuck fog of war sometimes, and double fuck the nasty shit that lurks in it too.  Turning missions into trail and error crap, shit off....

R-Type Tactics

The next game that's been taking a pretty significant portion of my time is R-Type Tactics, which is a weird way to take the series I think.  For anyone who may not know, R-Type is a dirty big long series of side scrolling shooter games for various formats, most notably in the arcades so to see it appear as a turn based strategy game more than raised an eyebrow the first time I saw it.

Anyway, the story for this thing is that there is this huge alien army called the Bydo that's being ruining Earth's shit for a long long time and its up to you to get all your ships together and go wreck face.  It's a pretty minimalistic plot that tries to flesh itself by talking about the state of the Earth army and crap like that, but if you've ever played a shooter, you don't give a shit about the plot then and you won't give a shit about it now.

 I'm actually finding this game kind of hard to write about as now that I think about it, it's actually pretty boring.  Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy playing R-Type Tactics, but I can't ever do more than one or two missions in one sitting and by the time its over I'm pretty burnt out.

I think the problem is that there is very little variation in the missions and all the objectives boil down to "kill the enemy flagship" and on top of that all the maps are just expanses of space or boring orange looking interior levels.  Granted I've not beaten the game yet, there may be some cool looking levels coming up, but I'm pretty far and it's been dull as shit so far.

The second problem I have with this game, is the "tactics" part of the title.  I've used the same strategy every time and I've never even come close to losing a level yet.  Oh, and before anyone calls me out on my progress, I'm INVADING THE BYDO HOME WORLD, so that must be getting on to the last section of the game at least.  Every level I just scout, keep the bombers close behind, keep the fighters in the back until their charged and then let them rip, and that's it, missions usually over by that point.  That feeling of routine that has sunk in with each mission really makes me not want to play it for long periods of time, it does an absolutely garbage job of keeping me engaged.

The third issue I have with this game is the ships.  Here is an example of the Research and Development menu to build new ships.

Sorry about the image quality, I had to take it off my camera because I don't know how to get proper screen shots off a PSP, so whatever.  Anyway, unless you've played the game you have no idea how good or bad these ships actually are, but take it from me, apart from the bomber they are ALL garbage.  I refuse to even waste resources on a Orbit Fighter because it's going to be a load of crap just like the rest of them.  Oh, and that bipedal thing is a load of wank too, and that's the upgrade that I own down at the bottom.  It has like, 2 movement and can only melee, so yeah, fat lot of fucking good that ship is.  Finally, that bomber, is the most overpowered goddamn unit in any turn based game I've ever seen.  It comes equipped with a nuke, that just bodies whatever the hell you fire it at.  It never misses and it does HUGE damage.  So you keep a resupply unit on each of your bombers and your set for every mission.  Sure, the fighters get a super powerful charge shot, but it takes like 4 turns to charge so that can piss off too.

Anyway, one final issue I have with this game is the load times.  Loading between missions is OK, but occasionally the game will do that Advance Wars thing where it shows the groups of ships firing on each other.  At first its cool, as an R-Type fan to see the ships and bosses rendered in 3D but the problem is, the game has to load each sequence and it takes a LOOONG time.  You can add about 10 minutes of mission time just in loading time for those sequences so to make the boring missions go faster you end up just turning that shit off anyway.

Up there I said somewhere that I enjoy playing R-Type Tactics, but over the course of writing this post I think I've made myself hate it.  Anyway I'll slog through it and post some updates about the rest of the game later.