Cool Things In Japanese Arcades

I always have to come back to talking about the arcades since it's probably one of my favorite things about living in Japan.  Now the thing that tends to blow most peoples minds, which is the whole idea of a sort of members card that tracks stats and progress I've talked about to death.  Here is a video of me talking about it so that I don't have to type it all out again if you don't know what I'm on about.

But that's not the only cool thing about these places so here's 3 more really cool things about Japanese Arcades you may not know about

1) Recording and Sharing

Usually if you walk into a big arcade these a big signboard at the front that has all the rules and usually one of those rules is you're not allowed to bring in a camera and take pictures and stuff.  However the people who run these places know that gamers like to come in, record their game play if they are particularly good and share it with Nico Nico Douga or YouTube.  I noticed about a year ago that a lot of the machines in my nearest arcade started hooking up capture cards to the machine nearest to the aisle which you could plug a USB device in and record to it.  Not only this but recently I found that the rhythm game Chunithm has set up these sort of holders for your phone that give you a perfect angle on the screen and controller so that you can record shit and basically upload it there and then.  Before all this started people were bringing in cameras and tripods and shit which would clog up the space for people so all of this is a welcome addition

2) Manage your shit from your house

There are certain games such as Gunslinger Stratos or Code of Joker along with others that allow you to manage gun loud outs, decks or profile details from the comfort of your own home so that when you actually get to the arcade you aren't wasting your time in menus and shit and you can just sit down and play the damn game.  The one I'm most familiar with is Code of Jokers Agent Lab.

https://coj-agentlabo.com/login?_ga=1.34699425.1013799049.1465114829

If you try to modify your deck in the arcade you are given a 120 second time limit and after that you start spending your paid credit and if you've ever tried to make a deck for a card game in 2 minutes it's a little tight.  However if you login to the above link you can sit, read through all your cards and make decks to your hearts content so that when you go to the arcade and scan your Aime you can just start playing right away. 

3) Actual Collectable Shit

I love collecting shit, it's just fun to do and one of the great things about the arcade is that they give you a chance to get your hands on quite a bit of swag.  Of course there's the UFO machines which give you prizes but they are actually worth trying for over here unlike the shitty plushies that you get in the UK.  However there are games like Sengoku Taisen (or whatever that new one is called) and Kantai Collection which give you actual physical cards to collect and trade which also level up in game as you use them, it's really cool.

My meager but much loved Kantai cards

 The best part is that you don't have to go to another shop to buy cards and then bring them to the arcade like it's Yu-Gi-Oh or some shit.  After you finish playing a round the machine itself will print a card for you to add to your collection so there's not really any extra effort required for amassing a decent collection of stuff.  There do exist specialist shops that allow you to buy the rare cards individually but these are mainly for the most hardcore of collectors rather than just regular players of the game.

---

It's a real shame that we don't have these kind of games in the UK because I might not hate the idea of returning home so much if we did.  That said if we did put these games into English arcades they'd probably just get abused and become unusable within a week anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

Arcade Quickie: Chunithm Brain Fluid Explosion Girl Expert

Regret Not Trying a WoW RP Server

Every so often I'll be talking with a friend and the topic of WoW will come up.  It usually goes the same way every time too with us talking fondly of memories playing with friends and shit back in Vanilla or Burning Crusade days and then getting pissed off with it some time shortly after that and begrudgingly giving up on it.

While thinking about WoW I realized that while I don't have much urge to ever return to it, I do sort of regret never playing on the games RP servers.  I always played on a PVP server and admittedly at the time I didn't "get" RP servers like that.  I just wanted to play the game, kill shit and get sick epic gear and that kind of thing was reserved for the kind of fat acne ridden, basement dwelling nerd with no real friends.  (I was a horribly judgemental teen, sorry)

Once I got to university though I started playing Dungeons and Dragons and I came to the realization that role playing was actually really fun ESPECIALLY if you've got a good group of friends and a few drinks to help things get a little silly.  It made me think though that I sort of regret not giving the RP servers a chance back when I was at the height of my WoW playing time.

In case you're not familiar with what this entails, an RP server is a place where you don't just play the game but you actually have to play your character as if it was a real person in the world of Azeroth and not just a loot collecting machine.  This of course includes stuff about the way you talk to other players but also how you move around the world and things like that.  I have friends who have tried RP servers before and they said the one of the best things about it was that the main town chats actually had conversations going on in them rather than just people spamming for groups or to sell items.

I would never go back to WoW now, my backlog is so huge that playing an MMO is probably a bad idea but I'll always kind of regret not giving that side of the game a go.  Then again, if I had done it I probably would have been all grimdark and shit so for my own sake maybe it was a good thing I didn't.

IIDX Is Just Too Hard For Me

No one likes to admit they suck shit at a thing.  It's hard for one to throw their hands up and say "Yep, that thing, I'm fucking awful at it" but I think it's about time I throw my hands up and say yes, Beatmania IIDX (or 2 DX) is just flat out too hard for me.

I've been trying to git gud at this game for multiple years now and every time I just get frustrated and quit.  Back in high school, IIDX was the reason I got into importing Japanese games.  I got a Swap Magic, a IIDX controller and IIDX RED off Play Asia and tried to get good at it in my house since England didn't actually have any machines to play on.  Although I do think there was an original Beatmania cabinet in London, but who cares about Beatmania 1?

Rhythm games are usually something I'm pretty good at.  I play DDR fairly well and I can rock most of the top level shit in the arcades for certain titles.  Here's a video of me playing Night of Nights on Chunithm in the arcade just to prove I'm not a total inept moron when it comes to this genre.

However, that's Chunithm, now check out this video of some dude playing an IIDX song.

It's just another fucking level that I can't wrap my head around.  What's depressing about this whole this is that I actually LIKE IIDX so being shit at it genuinely saddens me. 

Still though, I'm not one to give up.  Maybe from today I'll give it another shot and hopefully in a month or 2 (or 6) I'll be able to come and make another post about how I conquered it and got good.  The chances of that ACTUALLY happening are quite low though since 1) I'll probably get frustrated and 2) The machines are usually busy and I don't wanna wait.

Still, I can dream 

Friday the 13th

God I remember all the buildup for this game.  Every other day on Facebook one of those videos from some weird baity gaming page would post a trailer or some game play footage like "erh muh gerd looks so good" and then the game actually came out and it sort of just vanished from existence.  Anyway thanks to a friend I've finally had a chance to give it a go.

The short version of this post is that if you followed the hype train then you'll probably be disappointing by how the game turned out but for me, I thought it looked a bit shit to begin with so I was actually pleasantly surprised.  Nothing special but a fun little game that you could happily kill a few hours with.

The game itself is pretty simple.  You join an online lobby with a bunch of people and everyone chooses a camp counselor and a Jason.  Which characters are available is dependent on your level which seems a little bullshitty to me since each character does seem to be a little bit different but whatever, you get EXP pretty quickly.  Once the game starts, one player is assigned to be the Jason and everyone else has to run away.  The goal is to escape or survive until the end of the timer for the counselors and to murder everyone for Jason.

On each map there are a number of objectives which involve things like repairing a car or calling the police and doing this will help speed up your escape but the items required for this are placed randomly throughout the map so if you want to get it done, working with other players might be a good idea although I'm playing the game in a busy bar with no voice control so for me that's pretty much impossible.  For Jason it's just a case of kill as many people as you can but you're a slow bulky piece of shit so you have a few powers to help you out like the ability to sense players or teleport around the map.  Once everyone is dead or has escaped the game ends and you're given experience with which you unlock characters and perks and whatnot.  Then you do it all again till the end of time.

I have two major problems with what limited time I've had with the game.  The first being that Jason just isn't fun to play AT ALL.  Maybe it's because I'm bad but he's super unwieldy and just sort of needlessly hard to use.  It's hard to articulate but maybe if you try the game you'll know what I mean but generally the counselors are just a lot more fun to play.  My other problem is that the game is buggy to fuck.  The worst bug I saw was when another friend of mine was playing Jason and I don't quite know what happened but the HUD vanished and he was completely locked out of using his powers and couldn't smash doors and stuff properly.  Eventually he got lucky an someone clocked him in the face with a frying pan and when he came out of the stun all his shit came back.  One other minor annoyance is that if the player controlling Jason drops from the game then the game just instantly fucking ends.  I get why but couldn't thay have maybe just let a bot Jason take over or something?

Either way, while Friday the 13th is nothing special it's at least a bit of mindless fun for a few hours.  I imagine if you get a team of good counselors and a Jason that actually knows what he's doing it could be pretty intense but unfortunately every game I've played/witnessed up to now seems to be populated with dribbling children but that isn't exactly the games fault.  Not something I'd pay full price for but put that shit on a Steam sale and I'll pick up my own copy eventually.

I Hate Blitzball

If you've been watching the stream you'll know what I'm about to say already.  I'm in the final part of my FFX playthrough but this involves some HEAVY grinding to get the stats and gear needed to kill the Dark Aeons and ultimately the games hardest boss, Penance.

In order to make life a lot easier for yourself you get acquire the best weapons in the game known as Celestial Weapons.  The only drawback to these weapons is that when you first get them they are useless with the only skill on them being "No AP" which basically means no experience.  Once you do power them up though using a crest and a sigil they do crazy stuff like break the damage limit or charge your overdrive meter at triple speed and shit like that.

Now for the Dark Aeon stuff Wakka is a very important character because his limit Attack Reels is basically one of the best moves in the game.  With Wakka fully powered up and geared out he's doing 12x99,999 damage which is a hell of a lot of hurt.  Getting him to this point is the annoying part though.

Getting his crest is easy, you just go to a locker in Lucca and press X and you have it.  The sigil on the other hand requires you to play an absolute shit ton of blitzball, which might be the single most boring mini game in Final Fantasy history.  You need to play it 10 times in a league to get Attack Reels, then play games until a tournament with Status Reels pops up THEN finish the league you were in to start a new one with Auroch reels AND THEN play 10 more league games for the sigil.  This doesn't sound so bad but Blitzball is just eye gougingly dull and shouldn't be forced upon anybody like it is here.

I think for me, the main reason it's so disappointing is that in that opening cut scene Blitz looks like this sick, crazy underwater rugby with people being flung out of the arena and people smashing each other in the face every which way.  When you actually get into proper blitz though it's a boring turn based affair where you just pass to Tidus and Jecht Shot every few moments to win matches against incompetent AI.

What's weird is that I know people who actually LIKE Blitzball.  I don't get how one possibly could because it's already an easy mode snoozefest if you put no effort into it but if you actually research how to get and use the best players then the whole thing becomes a joke.  I guess it must just be relaxing or something but as far as I'm concerned Blitz can just fuck off forever.

Dragon Quest Rivals First Impressions

Japan loves its card games.  Very close to my house there are about 4 stores dedicated to the buying, selling and playing of trading cards of which there seem to be hundreds of different games but you can also just hit up a used book store to buy individual cards for games like Yu-gi-oh and whatnot.  As well as that there are a bunch of digital trading card games some of which are exclusive to the arcade.  But the arcades not only have digital based card games but also games that actually spit out physical cards for use in the game, it's crazy.  Japan LOVES card games.

Japan also loves a bit of Dragon Quest which is basically one of the big boss boys of the RPG genre.  So of course Dragon Quest, like Warcraft, The Witcher and DotA have come out with their own card based video game for mobile platforms.  I usually avoid all the other card games on the IOS since I'm balls deep into Shadowverse and the idea of playing two different card games at the same time seems a bit pointless but the gameplay in DQ Rivals seemed different enough from something like Hearth or 'Verse to at least give it a go.

It's not completely unique, there are a number of similarities to Hearth.  The way the cards looks is pretty much identical and the idea that the character that you pick have their own special ability and cards sets seems ripped straight from that model.  Also the ranking system is basically the same as Hearthstone and of course it has that thing where you can earn "dust" in order to create individual cards if you're trying to make a specific kind of deck.  Basically out of the actual card combat they are fucking identical.

But the card combat itself is where things get interesting.  Each player has 6 blocks on their side of the field where they can play monsters and the positioning of your monsters is pretty important when it comes to battle strategy.  So for example, in Hearthverse you can attack the enemy directly pretty much anytime unless they play a monster with a defender ability.  In DQ rivals, you have monsters with that kind of skill but you can also put all your monsters in a row which will create a wall in order to defend your character.  Then on top of that, if you have a monster with a cool ability you don't want getting murdered you can play another creature in front of them in order to defend.  It's a cool mechanic that means that you not only have to worry about what monsters you have but also where you put them on the board in any given situation.  Your hero also has an ability that they have to charge but I wont go into detail about that because it's pretty much the same as Hearthstone.

Right now I'm pretty sure its exclusive to Japan but it seems like there has been a decent amount of effort made to make a game that's familiar enough to fans of this mobile card  game genre so they don't have  to relearn a fuckton of new systems but different enough to make it worth playing past the tutorial.  If you can get hold of it, give it a go.  Shit is free so you have nothing to lose

Setting Up Let it Die

I've been very busy recently with a family visit to Japan so content has been a little thin on the ground but for Halloween I tried to do a little stream of Let it Die for the PS4.  If you've not heard of this game it's a sort of free to play hack and slash game made by Grasshopper Manufacture which plays a little like a Souls game and I think it has perma-death.  I've not really had much of a chance to play it however just setting it up was complete bullshit so I want to share my experience.

First of all just getting the game was bullshit.  I hopped onto the Playstation store and found it in the free to play section.  However, there was no download available that was free and I discovered that on the Japanese store the only option for you is one that comes with 2 units of the premium currency which I think is called Death Metals.  This means that the game was 108 yen which granted is only £0.70 but after being told that it was a free to play game I was a little pissed off about being forced to spend money on some in game shit I don't even know the purpose for.  While it was downloading I went and looked up Let it Die on the US and UK Playstation stores to find that on there the game IS actually free.  So really it's only the Japanese getting fucked over but it's still really annoying.

Anyway, the game loads up and the tutorial starts and I'm having a grand old time.  The game looks really nice, plays solidly and Death is a pretty interesting and funny character.  I'll talk more about the game itself once I manage to play it a bit more.  Once I finished the tutorial I was presented with another title screen and once I tried to hit go on that I got a big download message stuffed in my face.  Turns out the game only downloads the tutorial when you buy it and then downloads the rest later which resulted in me falling asleep while I was waiting and now I've not been able to play because I've been busy with family and work.

It looks like a really good game but the whole experience is a true testament to the really shitty side of modern gaming.