Abandoning Game Collection

 

When I first moved to Japan, access to retro shops and old hardware meant that I was extremely excited to start collecting old games.  I quite enjoy playing retro games and so being able to do so on real hardware sounded really good but over the years I have come to realize that collecting games is a big pile of bullshit (for me)

As of right now, I still have a pretty sizeable chunk of my game collection.  A while ago I sold a bunch of boxed SNES games that I had bought for about 100 yen each back to local used book chain Book Off because they were eating up tons of space in my closet, but most of it remains intact.  The problem with this collection though is that it's not doing anything, it's just sat there, collecting dust, I just own it for the sake of owning it.  

I do know that there's quite a lot of people who like displaying their games.  Piling them up in shelves like in the header image, putting jewel cases and boxes side by side or, in some cases, even putting them in special display cabinets.  This is all fine and dandy but there are two problems with that.  The first is a problem personal to me and many other collectors living in Japan where our houses or apartments just don't have to the space to do that, so even though I have a pretty sizable collection of PS1 games, they are just hiding in a cardboard box in my wardrobe.  The second is that even if I could, I just don't give enough of a fuck do that, I don't see the appeal of it.  Games are meant to be PLAYED, not looked at and I'm sure as shit that if you have a full wall of SNES games you aren't playing all of them any time soon.  In fact, if what I've seen on Twitter is to be believed, you have that massive wall of games and yet all you do is sit there and play Super Mario World, Super Metriod and Tetris all day while the rest of it sits there unused and unloved.  

What I realized though, the reason I started collecting all those games all those years ago is that I care about having access to these games more than I care about owning them.  Sometimes, on a lazy afternoon, it would be nice to just grab a random handful of Saturn games, spread them around me on the floor like I'm a young lad again and whittle away the hours playing a bunch of shit I've never heard of.  But nowadays that isn't necessary.  Mini systems and more importantly, emulation exist now so you don't actually NEED to spend a ton of money and use a ton of space to have that experience, with a few clicks and some computer know how you can have that afternoon with the Saturn but at no cost and you'll still have the shelf space for a cactus or something.

"But Tau! Emulation is IlLeGaL" I hear some of the 40 year old British saddos on Twitter cry.  Yes, to some extent they are correct, companies would probably rather you not download 3rd party software and their games and play them on your PC but who is really being hurt by emulation? Let's think on it for a second

One game I love dearly is Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne.  A long while ago, after moving to Japan, I wanted to play it again on my nice PS2 that I bought in Book Off.  So I went down to that very same Book Off to find a copy, and lo and behold there it was, the regular edition of SMT3 for about 600 yen.  But wait, Nocturne in Japan isn't the same Nocturne I had in the UK, I had the Maniacs edition! So a bit more looking and I find the Maniacs edition for TWENTY THOUSAND FUCKING YEN.  So I went home and I emulated it via PCSX2.  Now who did I hurt by doing this? ATLUS? No because they got my high school pocket money when I bought it in England.  The only people that lost out was the company that runs Book Off.  Someone who wasn't related to it's production or publication missed out on $200 because I'm not willing to pay jacked up prices for game that came out in 2003.

But the, a miracle happened, a Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne HD Remaster was announced for the Switch and PS4 and lemme fuckin' tell ya, I bought that shit IMMEDIATELY.  So the 20,000 yen I didn't give to whatever cunt runs Book Off I instead gave 6000 of it to ATLUS for the Switch version because SMT3 on the go is rad. The other 14,000 that I saved I can now use to buy other Atlus games like P5R (lol) and P5S or Persona Q or something like that.  Money that will go to people who actually work on those games to hopefully give me more SMT games (SMT5 release date please I'm beggin ya) If however I HAD given my money to Book Off that instead though, I probably wouldn't buy the remaster because I already had it on PS2 and ATLUS would have lost out on a sale.  Emulation reminded me just how awesome SMT3 still is after all those years, and then ATLUS sucked the money right out of my wallet with a version I can play on the go.  ATLUS, if anything, owe a big thank you to PCSX2.

If I buy a classic game, I want that money to go to the developers or the people who may be involved in making another one, I want to vote with my wallet and tell those devs or publishers that this is what I want more of.  I don't want to make some re-seller little cunt on Ebay $200 richer so he can buy more anime figurines to cum all over

I'm not saying however that game collecting is complete bullshit, if YOU personally get something out of it and you have the money to do it, then go for it.  I know a couple guys who collect for specifically the Saturn and the PC Engine and to tell you the truth, the idea of curating a collection of games for one system that you're particularly passionate about does have a sort of lure to me even now.  But if I'm being honest I'd rather save my money, support new IP and buy certain remakes of games I really like so that hopefully we can see some more from those series'

Getting Started With Shin Megami Tensei

 I am a big fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series in all of its wonderful little forms.  I don't care if it's mainline, Persona, Devil Survivor, Soul Hackers, I don't give a shit, it's all pretty good stuff.  In recent years too, SMT has seen a sort of surge in popularity thanks to Persona 4 and especially Persona 5, but whenever people talk about this game there's always some ass hat in the comments saying "Playing a real Shin Megami Tensei game, loser" and while this is off putting when phrased as such, I do think that it's something worth doing.  The series has a lot to offer and if you enjoyed P4 or P5 then there's a good chance you'll like at least some of the others.

Whats wrong with Persona?

The short answer is nothing, there is nothing inherently wrong with the Persona games.  As an entry into the series they are actually not bad.  They are, quite frankly, extremely EASY games and for old players who got their starts on the Maniacs version of SMT3 the Persona games are sort of laughable from a game play standpoint.  That's not to say they aren't fun but when a lot of people who have been playing since the PS2 and earlier, they enjoyed this series for the challenge it provided and I can sort of understand that they are upset about the easier, more wholesome spin-off games are getting the attention

Also the Persona "fandom" (fuck I hate that word) has this weird thing where it seems like a great deal of the people posting about Persona....haven't actually played it and if they have only a small portion of them have actually bothered to finish it.  When I finished vanilla Persona 5 a while ago, the trophy for seeing the ending was considered "Rare" and since 2016 it's just become "uncommon"

What's going on is that people see the nice wholesome plot about high school kids being best friends and sticking it to "the man" and get all gushy about it.  Weirdos who are happy to spend more time discussing "ships" and making weird head-cannon for members of the cast rather than just...playing the fucking games.  So I feel that SOME amount of the bile from mainline doesn't come from their dislike for the game itself, but rather the people who claim to like it.  The game is fine, but saying "Persona bad" triggers some idiots, so that's what they say

On Difficulty

One thing that the old guard will always go on about without fail is how "hard" these games are.  Do not be concerned, because like Dark Souls players, they are grossly overstating the games difficulty.  What SMT does require compared to other RPGs is some degree of adjusting.  Spell names are weird, press turn mechanics can be infuriating when they don't go your way and getting used to buffing and debuffing on the regular can be an easy thing to forget and it is VITAL in most of the series.

The reason the difficulty is so overstated I think is because a lot of people started with Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne.  Nocturne in Japan actually has 3 versions, a base version, a "maniacs" edition and a crossover game.  We never got the base version over in the west.  Nocturne in the west is actually the maniacs edition and is actually a slightly more challenging version of the base game with extra content.  Not that the other games aren't challenging, the series sort of keeps up a pretty decent degree of challenge throughout but in most cases outside of Nocturne Maniacs it isn't nearly as hard as people make it out to be

So where to start?

Well it depends what you want.  If you are into Pokemon, let's say, but you find those games too easy or too samey, they start with mainline.  SMT3 is available on PS2 and has a remaster on Switch and PS4 if you want to start the so called "real" way.  The Switch version is interesting because it's actually a re-release of the crossover edition which was a version of Nocturne Maniacs that featured a character from Devil Summoner.  SMT4 is arguably a better place to start since that game is MUCH easier and you can basically break the entire thing in half just by pumping all your stat points into magic.  I built my character NOT knowing that, did a strength build, and still coasted through the game on a chocolate surfboard so as far as starting places for mainline goes, 4 is actually really good.  

If mainline seems a bit daunting to you then, well, play Persona.  Persona 3 and up are very much the "dating sim" spinoff games but they all have extremely good RPGs behind them as well.  Demon Negotiation is less of a thing in Persona and it instead focuses on the bonds you form with people in the world.  Forming bonds makes your demon fusions stronger and there for easier to murder enemy demons in whatever dungeons you have to go through.  Persona 1 and 2 didn't have these dating sim elements but they are still good games, but a bit more....classic? I guess 

If chatting up school mates and romancing the local nurse in the clinic doesn't seem up your alley and you want something a little more traditional, go for the Digital Devil Saga duology.  The follow on from each other so you gotta play them in order but they are basically classic RPGs with a few SMT mechanics put in there.  Demon negotiation and capturing doesn't exist in these titles and instead your characters have a "demon form" that you acquire skills for via a sort of grid thing.  I've heard some people say that this ISN'T a good starting game for a reason I can't quite grasp so they are probably full of shit.  It was personally my second SMT game after 3 and my high schooler brain handled it just fine.

If you want to jump in at the deep end and REALLY go deep into the series, start at the beginning with Megami Tensei on the NES or Shin Megami Tensei on the SNES.  Classic dungeon crawls with the demon negotiation and all that good stuff.  Bring a pen and graph paper.  If you don't want to go that far back there's Strange Journey on the DS which offers a sort of similar experience but with a lot of the quality of life improvements.

If you like your battles more tactical then go for Devil Survivor.  If you like things like FF Tactics or other games in that genre, Devil Survivor should tickle your fancy just right.  If you want something more action oriented then try the Devil Summoner games, since it's just SMT with an action RPG combat system.  Raidou Kuzunoha is also a pretty cool protagonist.

There's a bunch of other games obviously that I haven't mentioned but I feel this smattering of the SMT platter is enough to get you started if you really were curious about playing a "real" Shin Megami Tensei game.

The only other word of advice I have after that is to just ignore the fucking fandom.  If you try SMT mainline, decide you don't like it and play ONLY Persona, that's fine, who gives a shit what BillyTwatface962 on Twitter thinks?  By the same token if you enjoy mainline and you think the Persona fandoms constant ranting about ships and console ports are "cringe", just ignore it.  Go do a no fusion run of 3 or something, it's far more fun and will probably make you feel better (or worse if RNG treats you shitty)

In conclusion: Just play some fucking SMT, it's great

Atomic Heart Hype

 

This is going to be a pretty short post but it's pretty rare for me to get hyped by an upcoming game so when I do I feel like I have to mention it.

Actually if I'm honest, Atomic Heart is a game I saw a couple of years ago via a trailer on YouTube and then forgot about.  Someone in my stream mentioned it and I just had to go and seek it out again.

 Game play wise it looks like pretty standard stuff, a Bioshock or Fallout type affair and since I really enjoy the first Bioshock, taking that game and giving it a Russian twist is more than welcome.  But what really got me interested was the striking visual style.  The overall setting looks like standard post-apocalypse but the things that inhabit the landscape and the indoor environments in that trailer look like some kind of abstract painting come to life.  Even if the game releases and ends up being bland open world bullshit, I'll probably enjoy exploring the world at the very least.

It reminds me of when I was younger and the I saw that Bioshock trailer for the first time

I suppose it's pretty clear that the developers of Atomic Heart are trying to imitate these old trailers with theirs and that's a good thing.  Hopefully their game will be just as interested as the first Bioshock was

Unfortunately though, there is no release date for Atomic Heart as far as I know.  It has a steam page with a big TBA on it but I'm OK with this.  I'd rather it take a long time and be a good game rather than have them rush it out and have another buggy mess on my hands.  I will be watching very carefully

VR Exclusive Games Tick Me Off

 

As I was playing through the Half Life series on stream someone asked me if I was going to play Half Life Alyx.  I sure as fuck would have LIKED to have played Half Life Alyx but I can't because I don't have a headset and I'm not about to drop that much dosh on one and that got me thinking about how much these VR exclusive games piss me off a little bit.

This post is not, however, a VR hate post.  VR looks really interesting and offers a way to play and interact with our games, if I was a rich man with a large house I probably wouldn't be making this post at all.  But I'm not a rich man and I don't have a big house so I'm going to be slightly grumpy for a bit.  The first problem with VR is the price where it seems to range from about 40,000 yen to 100,000 yen.  That's A LOT of fuckin' money right there, I could get a PS5 for around that price and at least then I'd be able to just hook that up and play it on my couch.  Probably get some free games with PS+ as well.  But even if I was willing to spend that kind of money I don't have the space in my house to use the damn thing.  It has all these sensors and controllers and shit that need setting up and I just don't have an adequate play space for it.

But these are all "me" problems.  I can save money, I can move house and when I do the above paragraph becomes invalid but that doesn't change the fact that there just aren't all that many games that stand out.  Without looking at Steam, just off the top of my head there is Half Life: Alyx and and Beat Saber that I want to play.  Everything I know about VR after that are just samey looking shooters or shitty attempts at horror games.  After taking a quick look at Steam after writing that last sentence, my opinion hasn't changed.  

But again, that's not my main problem with VR.  VR might have a bit of a crap library but it's a new thing, it's still sort of finding its feet.  My main problem is that a lot of the games on VR don't need to be EXCLUSIVELY VR.  I looked some game play footage of Alyx and yes I'm sure it's all very immersive with that headset on but it's not doing anything that couldn't be done with a mouse and keyboard.  Being locked out of an genuinely interesting looking experience because I'm not willing to drop $400 on a piece of hardware that I still see as sort of gimmicky to play games that aren't that different from standard PC games seems a bit stupid.  The one exception to this rule seems to be Beat Saber.  That's a unique take on the rhythm genre that basically needs to be in VR and wouldn't really work the same with standard button inputs or...mouse controls?

I'm not really mad at VR per se, I just wish that I just had access to the more interesting titles in the lineup.  Just another version of the same game but it allows me to sit in a chair and push buttons instead of making me stand up and flail around.  One day, probably after everyone's lost interesting and the hardware is cheap as fuck, I'll play these games, but for now, I'm gonna be sitting here with my peasant-ass controller looking grumpy

The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia

 

This game may go down as one of my favorite games ever, so prepare for a bit of a gush.

Some people may be aware of the Typing of the Dead games.  For those that aren't they are remakes of The House of the Dead, a series of arcade rail shooters, but repurposed as a typing tutor.  Zombies appear on screen with words underneath them and you have to type the words to "shoot" them.  It may sound a bit dull if you haven't seen it before but trust me, they are real good.

Trying to teach people how to type by turning it into some kind of game isn't exactly a new thing.  Most typing tutors I've seen have come with some sort of "game" mode where you are timed or tested on accuracy or something but it always feels like you're using some kind of corporate "Edutainment" bullshit.  Even Typing of the Dead, despite being awesome, feels more typing tutor than video game, something about the overall presentation I guess.  But then comes The Textorcist which is, despite being a game about typing, isn't really a typing tutor and is actually a full on game.  Not only is it focused on being a game, the developers decided to mash typing with bullet hell shooting of all fucking things and the result is awesome.

The story is kind of bare bones but it's about a priest called Ray who is an outcast from the Vatican going around doing exorcisms.  In doing this he stumbles on a conspiracy involving the Vatican actually being evil and summoning demons to wipe people off the face of the Earth for sinning too much or something.  It's not the deepest thing in the world but it's full of humor and serves as a nice little intro and outro to each stage.  Between stages you actually have to do some light investigating which involves searching a fake google or going through your files so it's a nice bit of flavor.

But forget plots, demon exorcisms is what we're all really here for so lets talk about how that works.  In each level an enemy will be at the top of the screen and you'll be at the bottom.  At the bottom of the screen there will be bible verses that you have to type, the current word of which will appear above your head.  While you are trying to type your Bible verses the enemy will, of course, be shooting shit at you.  So while you dodge with the arrow keys you have to type with the letter keys and at the start of the game it's very easy to dodge, and then use both hands to type a verse real quick but by the end you'll be frantically dodging while trying to type with one hand and it's all very frantic.  If you are hit, you drop your book and you have to run to go pick it up.  If you take too long to pick it up though Ray forgets his place and you have to restart the verse.  If you get hit while you are not carrying the book, you take a point of damage and after 3 hits you die.  It's a forgiving system but the game still manages to be quite challenging.  

There are items that you get at the end of each stage with various effects that modify your score depending on what it does.  For example you can get a bookmark which increases the amount of time you have to pick the book up if you get hit but it lowers your score by 20%.  You can also get a spiked collar for example, which gives you less health but increases your score by 20%.  There's also a monocle that you get at the end of the game which activates a "hard mode" where enemies do a weird glitch effect and you only have 1hp.  Wearing it gives you a +666% score modifier AND killing a boss in this mode gets you a piece of rock and if you get all of them something happens but I'm not sure because I haven't done it yet.

 I only really have 2 complaints about the game.  The first is that I kept encountering a bug during a demon change mechanic where my bible verses would overlap over the magic words I had to type.  Not a huge problem since the magic words are the same every time but it's annoying to look at.  The other is that the third to last boss that you fight is just WAYYYYY fucking harder than every other enemy in the game.  I spent the better part of 2 hours fighting that boss only to move on and do the last 2 first try.  It feels like something got mixed up somewhere.

Basically, the Textorcist is like someone took Mavis Bacon Teaches Typing, Donpachi, Hotline Miami and Christian conspiracy theories and put them in a big blender.  The result is a fun, challenging and extremely replayable little game that should keep you entertained for hours or until your hand starts to cramp up

Little Nightmares

 

Little Nightmares is one of those games I just don't get.  I was told by multiple people that I know that it was awesome, that it was an excellent game that is going to terrify me and leave me awestruck by the end.  Well I didn't get that, not even a little bit.  I don't think Little Nightmares is a shitty game at all but it has to go on the ever growing pile of mediocre games with large followings that I just can't comprehend.

There isn't much of a story to speak of.  You play as Six, a little girl (I think) trapped in a giant ship called The Maw.  The Maw seems to host some kind of event where these disfigured "people" come on board and just gorge themselves on food and you are the main course so you have to get out.  The game itself however, doesn't tell you this.  This information is given to you on the Steam store page of all things, I had no idea until AFTER I was finished with the game that my character was called Six and the big ship was called The Maw.  There's no cutscenes or notes to read or anything, which is fine since they are clearly going for a more environmental storytelling approach, but the story isn't interesting enough so it all just comes off as a bit pretentious.

Game play wise it's just a platformer.  You run, you jump, you pull blocks, push buttons and turn valves and shit to progress.  Every so often the game will throw a big monster at you which you have to hide from as you go from room to room.  There is no combat, you can't fend off the big bad unless you are scripted to do so which means if you are caught, most often you are going to get killed.  Getting killed though doesn't matter because check points are extremely frequent which means that not only is Little Nightmares pathetically easy to finish but it also sucks all the tension out of the horror.  I'm not scared of the blind creature with massive spider arms if I know that I'm only going to lose 30 seconds of progress if he gets me.  

I'm trying to keep this post spoiler free but there's one game play section I just HAVE to talk about because it pissed me off so hard.  There's a bit where you have to run along a table, food is haphazardly strewn everywhere and the weirdos that inhabit the ship and just guzzling it up Hungry Hungry Hippo style.  You have to weave between the people as to not get grabbed but it's extremely tight and the hitboxes for what counts as a grab and what counts as a near miss just don't make any sense.  The checkpoint for this section however, is right near the table, so all you get is a feeling of rage welling within you as you have to creep your way down the table for the 17th fucking time because the slow, fat, lumbering monsters suddenly have reflexes like the flash.

I will say though, visually the game is quite interesting.  I remember watching the Rohl Dahl movie James and the Giant Peach as a kid and I haven't seen it since then and I'm not going to look it up before publishing this post but it was giving me those vibes.  The art style is quite striking and everything looks nice and spooky.  It's got this weird dollhouse vibe to it all that gives it a nice creepy vibe making me think that Little Nightmares would have served better as an animated short film rather than a game.

Little Nightmare isn't a bad game, a lot of effort went into it and it shows, it's a perfectly serviceable little platformer, I just don't understand all the hype that surrounds it.  So if a short, simple little horror adventure is what you want then I'd still recommend picking it up just don't expect anything more than that.  There's also a Little Nightmares 2 and I didn't hate this first one enough to not give that a try at some point so maybe some of my gripes are fixed with the sequel, we shall see