Museca Arcade

The strangely named Museca is a game that has been released recently to Japanese arcades and with that big strange controller I couldn't help but give it a try.  With so many rhythm games available in the arcade just how does this one stack up?

Well, I did the first thing one does with every Konami game and I scanned my E-Amusement card.  If you're unfamiliar with how gaming IC cards work, please refer to this video for a quick primer

After typing in a name and setting a pin number I was met with a whole ton of story, which is strange for this kind of game, that I just skipped through and went straight to the music select.

The games music selections at the start are you standard Bemani rhythm game fare with lots of J-Pop and a couple of Touhou tracks which seems to be a standard every sine Sound Voltex.  Usually I like to crank up the difficulty level since I play a lot of rhythm games but I couldn't quite figure out how to do it and since it was my first credit I didn't care all that much. 

The most interesting part of this game is definitely the controller

There are 5 buttons in a sort of Pop n' Music style arrangement that can be both pushed and spun.  Under the machine there is a pedal for a special type of hold notes but 2 of the 3 songs I played for my first credit did not feature any pedal action so I'm guessing that's something that only shows up at higher level play.  There are 2 main types of notes which are taps, where you push the button in and spins where you spin the button like a turn table.  It's fun to play and for my first time, surprisingly confusing sometimes.  Considering that I play a little bit of IIDX I thought 5 huge buttons would be easy to adapt to but I still found myself losing my place on the pad a couple of times, guess I'm just a moron.

When you finish, assuming you have a card, you are given a screen where you can unlock new music.  I could only afford to unlock songs on their easiest mode because buying intermediate or expert tracks is outrageously expensive on the in game currency.  Then again, It seemed pretty easy to gather so I'm guessing it won't be too long before I'm able to try some higher level stuff. 

Well, that's enough reading.  All in all I think the game is pretty good.  I filmed a video of me playing the highest level song available to me at the time so check it out.  I'll be coming back to this game a lot so watch this channel for some cool videos in the future

Arcade Quickie: Final Fantasy Dissidia Arcade Game 1 (Loss)

Today I played some Dissidia Arcade and unfortunately lost the game.  Still having trouble wrapping my head around everything that's going on.  Didn't help that I walked into a brave attack like an idiot then followed it up with mass panic slamming of the summon button which just left me open.  Oh well, lessons learned!

Turning Japanese: Twitch and YouTube update!

So, you may have noticed that the last two weeks have been extremely thin on the ground when it comes to streaming.  Well don't worry I've not given up, I've just been extremely busy.  The first week of absence was due to new year and the build up to it, I was extremely busy and didn't have all that much time.  This second week is due to AGDQ 2016 which, at time of writing, is currently still going and I'm far too glued to that to stream myself.  That said, I'll be going hard once its done so look forward to that.  In the meantime I want to announce two new segments coming to identity gaming.

First the Twitch update

I've been living in Japan for a while now and I can speak it pretty well but if there is one thing that has sucked consistently since day 1 it's my Kanji.  Since I have dreams one day of passing certain Japanese tests within the country I thought I'd incorporate a bit of gaming into my Kanji study.  So, every Wednesday will be Japan day, a day where I play Japan exclusive games and do my best to translate them live on camera.  Like I said, my Kanji kind of sucks so it might be slow and plodding but it'll help me out and hopefully you'll be able to see some games you've never heard of before.  I'll enjoy it at the very least

Next the YouTube update, let's start with a video!

I go to the Game Centre an awful lot, I mainly enjoy playing a digital TCG called Code of Joker and the plethora of rhythm games that they have set up there.  So, just for a bit of fun and to give my YT channel some much needed activity, I'll be chronicling my adventures through the arcades of Japan by filming game play from my phone.  Weather it's me sucking at Code of Joker, beasting some other game or just trying out something new, if I can I'll film it and upload it.  I'll also be happy to take requests to showcase some games so if you hear about something  let me know and I'll go seek it out!

I'll wait until I lose some weight before I upload anything DDR related though....

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this content and keep supporting me, the site and the Alzheimer's Society!

Mind Zero

So at time of writing this post I JUST beat this game.  I killed the final boss on my way home from work in the train and managed to watch the ending before arriving at my nearest station.  God bless portable systems.

Mind Zero (Or Mind=Zero or whatever the fuck) is a low budget RPG for Playstation Vita.  Usually Vita games cost about 3-5000 yen in the stores but this one was only 1000 and with my Vita library being a bit small I snapped it up and had no idea what to expect.  What I found was a fairly decent game with something horribly rage inducing at the end. 

Mind Zero follows the adventures of Takanashi Kei and his high school chums as they get roped into a strange adventure.  Popping up around bits of Saitama are strange doors that lead to a strange world full of monsters and our heroes are granted the ability to use their MINDs inorder to combat the monsters and stop them from running rampant in our world.  If you have ever played a Persona game then a MIND is essentially the same thing and that's the sad fate for this game is that it's pretty much constantly being compared to Persona 4 as a result.  Anyway, another group of MIND users show up and they are being a bunch of dicks and it all culminates in your buddy being kidnapped so it's up to you to rescue your friend and put an end to this strange groups nefarious schemes.

The game itself is a dungeon crawl sort of thing with all the exploring being done in first person.  When you get into combat you can switch between your MIND or your character although you'll only ever want to use MIND because the only thing your characters can do is use items and suck at fighting.  So you do a bit of story, explore a dungeon, kill a boss and then rinse repeat until you beat the game.  Things do get a little repetitive and the game sucks to try and play in long stints but if you use it to kill a train ride or fill your lunch break then it manages to stay enjoyable throughout.

Other features include a skill system where you get cards in combat and then head to a shop to level them up or change them into stronger skills.  The game has a total of 4 skills that are at all worth any kind of effort and then about a hundred useless sacks of crap that you'll never ever need or use.  I meticulously made sure that my characters were properly skilled out and everything was leveled up but I only ended up using 4 of the available skills because everything is piss easy.  There are also some side quests but they pretty much all involve going into a previously cleared dungeon and finding an item.  It's tedious as fuck so after the first 6 or so of these I just started using guides to find the shit because fuck wandering around  the same environment for another hour or 2 just to find a useless item to tick a useless thing off a list of requests.

Despite my bitching, I did actually enjoy playing the game, it definitely made my lunch breaks and train rides to work much more fun.  That said, there is one thing that really pissed me off and there is going to be some spoilers in case you care so...

!!! SPOILERS !!!

The game isn't fucking finished.  You get to the end of the game, confront the final boss and smash his face in.  He says a few last words, dies and then the bitch you've been trying to rescue the whole game gets sucked through a door of evil and we never find out what happens.  Then it cuts to a support character and his buddy and he gets blown up inside his car which is followed by the fucking credits reel. 

None of the mysteries the game put forth are answered and none of the problems that the characters are facing are resolved.  I guess this means that there's going to be a sequel but this shit pisses me the fuck off.  I play this many hours of an RPG to not get at least some kind of ending.  At least let me rescue the girl and have the characters ponder how fucked the world will be if they don't do something about that big fucking door that opened, you don't need to leave me completely in the dark about what happens next.  I might not even care enough to buy your next fucking dungeon crawling Persona rip off.

!!! END SPOILERS !!!

All in all, Mind Zero is a low budget game that is fun to play but has some glaring flaws and poses no challenge to anyone who's even looked at a JRPG before.  If you can get it for mega cheap like I did then check it out but if the asking price is anything more than about £7 then ignore and pick up something better for your Vita.  Finally, I know that it's been released in the west but I can't comment on the quality of the translation because I played it all in Japanese, so someone should let me know how that turned out.

Super Potato Lucky Bag 2016!

I bought a lucky bag!  Is there anything good inside?!  Watch and find out!

FPS Used To Be Better

FPS is one of the biggest genres in the industry and always kind of has been.  A long long time ago we had Wolfenstien 3D, Doom, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D among many many others and now the big players in the genre are things like CoD, Battlefield and other more realistic military type shooters.

But that's kind of my problem with the modern FPS game.  Most of them are sort of realistic type military shooters like Call of Duty.  The only other thing we have aside from that are things like Halo but that's just a military shooter with a sci-fi coat of paint.  These games aren't bad by any stretch but they don't come nearly as close to the thrill of the old school FPS.  The fast paced, acrobatic, labyrinthine and colorful shooters of days passed has been replaced with gritty, realistic yet unchallenging games and I can't help but feel things are significantly worse off as a result.

Most people who hold this kind of opinion of older games are accused of having rose tinted nostalgia goggles but this is one of those cases where those games were just better.  I've recently been playing Serious Sam HD: First Encounter off Steam and I'm having so much more fun with this than I have with any other modern FPS title.  I can have more than two weapons, my health doesn't regenerate for free, equipment and enemies are colourful and interesting, there are secrets everywhere and so much more.  I felt a similar thing when playing Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition a few months ago too.

Even multiplayer FPS was better back then.  It used to be all about speed, skill, knowledge of the map both for layouts and pick ups and that was just the tip of the iceberg.  Things like Quake which used a lot of rocket jumping had all sorts of weird shit in play that I can't even begin to wrap my head around.  Granted things are a lot more accessible now but it's a damn shame that the games just aren't quite as fun.

Still, this is just me and I don't want to completely disregard modern FPS games just because I feel the old ones are more fun.  I have a lot of fond memories playing Modern Warfare 1 and 2 online with buddies and sometimes I find myself getting tempted to try out  the latest version of Call of Duty.  Let's not forget the new Star Wars Battlefront which looks cool as shit.  That said, I'd much rather play some Doom, Serious Sam or Quake than CoD or Battlefield.  Luckily the genre isn't completely devoid of old style games and things like Painkiller and that new Rise of the Triad game are keeping things geared more towards fun than realism and prestige bragging.

Tau Plays Discworld Part 14

Kicking off the content for 2016 with a new episode of Discworld!  Enjoy!