Eternal Sonata

There may be spoilers here, so if you care about the spoilers for a game this old, then proceed with caution.

Eternal Sonata was a game that came out for Xbox in 2007 and while I played it at launch I didn't get round to actually finishing it until much later.  Then my Xbox version got stolen and I decided to replay it on PS3 recently so I thought I'd spend a little bit of time talking about it.

Eternal Sonata is a game with a very strange premise.  You follow the adventures of Frans Frederic Chopin, the pianist, through his death dream.  On his adventure through his own mind he meets up with a colourful cast of characters and together they have to stop the evil Count Waltz from taking over the world. Obviously there's more to it than that, but if I tried to tell you every facet of the story I'd be here all fucking day.

The game itself is actually really good with a really interesting combat system, good music, nice art and really well done voice acting (at least in Japanese) despite some of the silly lines.  You spend most of your time exploring environments and fighting monsters but the environments are so varied and the combat is so fun that the the games formulaic structure never really gets all that boring.

Aside from the interesting locales and fun combat the game is also split up between chapters with some real life information about Chopin himself which is really interesting.  Each little history section has one of Chopin's pieces playing in the background and it brings a nice bit of realism into what is essentially a very silly and outlandish anime game.

The game does suffer from a few problems though.  The story does like to stop and spin it's wheels while the characters do something completely pointless like explore a mirror or some shit.  There are certain segments and certain dungeons that do feel a bit like filler in order to pad out the game.  Also the combat, while not too challenging really is extremely unforgiving.  When an enemy attacks you have a chance to block and successfully doing this will greatly reduce the damage.  Not getting a block is OK for most normal enemies but there are some boss fights where missing the block will mean the death of a character.

The ending is also fucking retarded and I had absolutely NO idea what the fuck happened.  Someone died and then came back and then someone else died and came back and they had a chat about something or other and it all made no sense.  Also the game just fucking removed ALL subtitles for the credits sequence.  This is fine for me because I can speak and understand Japanese but for people who turned on the Japanese voices just because they prefer it that way get totally shafted in the games final moments.

However these are all little niggles in what is essentially a great RPG for the PS3 and Xbox 360.  I would recommended Eternal Sonata to any RPG fan who needs a fix of whimsy and light hearted adventure. 

The WiiU ain't so bad

The WiiU has a pretty rough time in a lot of gaming circles.  It's always branded as the "kiddy" console or tossed aside because it doesn't have all the next gen military first person shooting games that the PS4 and Xbox One has.  It's also not as powerful so for the kind of people that think graphics are super important to a game then there is no way they are going to touch the damn thing.

But it's a damn shame really because to me, the WiiU is about the only console I can talk about and not get incredibly pissed off with.  There's so much drama surrounding the PS4 and the Xbox One and there are so many extra features and other useless crap on those machines that it almost feels like they have forgotten what their first function is.  Playing fucking games.

That's not to say that the PS4 or the Xbox One are bad and that the WiiU is super good, but it's just a case of the WiiU having some fucking personality that the other two don't.  Off the top of my head at time of writing I cannot think of a SINGLE PS4 or XBox One game that I am looking forward to.  However I can think of plenty of WiiU titles that I want or am looking forward to and I don't even own the bloody system yet, I've been playing one that I borrowed from a friend.

I'm sure this will all change over time but right now the WiiU is absolutely storming this generation and it's being ignored because of the reputation Nintendo created for themselves after the Wii.  There are things I dislike about the WiiU but the quality of the games and the general ease of use makes it the number 1 system for me right now. 

Will be picking up one of my very own rather soon I think

CGI Trailers Are Bullshit

With E3 just behind us the one thing that people are talking about are the new games and the trailers that came with them.  This is all well and good because some of the trailers featured at E3 2014 were actually pretty rad, but today I want to share one pet peeve of mine and that’s the CGI only trailer.

A great example of this is the upcoming game from From Software called Bloodborne.  Now from what I’ve heard, Bloodborne is gearing up to be pretty good as it sounds just like a souls game but with a slightly different setting.  However even though I’m looking forward to this title, the trailer that I saw during the Sony E3 press conference pissed me off to no end.  Check it out

I mean it’s not a bad trailer, it’s really well done at atmospheric and stuff like that but the reason why this and all other CGI trailers piss me off to no end is because there is no fucking gameplay.  When I buy a game it’s so that I can take it home and PLAY it and when I watch a trailer I want to get an idea of what the game PLAYS like.  You know what CGI trailers don’t show you? FUCKING GAMEPLAY.

 

As much as the video game industry seems to be in denial about it nowadays, video games are NOT movies.  I’m not going to buy or get hyped for a game based on how pretty you make its cutscenes.  What you are doing when you make a CGI only trailer is just wasting everyone’s time and hoping that you can generate hype or sales based on pretty pictures and flashing lights.

As much as the video game industry seems to be in denial about it nowadays, video games are NOT movies.  I’m not going to buy or get hyped for a game based on how pretty you make its cutscenes.  What you are doing when you make a CGI only trailer is just wasting everyone’s time and hoping that you can generate hype or sales based on pretty pictures and flashing lights.

 

Remember, the most important aspect of a video GAME is its GAMEPLAY.  Keep that in mind when building your trailers and stop wasting people’s time with this crap.