Imagine If... Shin Megami Tensei AR Game

 

I remember when Shin Megami Tensei Dx2 Liberation was announced.  It was around the time that Pokemon Go was still riding a wave of popularity and I got the (mistaken) idea that Dx2 was going to be that kind of game but when it came time to download I was sorely disappointing.

 When I spoke about Dx2 on the blog I had a few nice things to say about it.  Despite the awful gatcha system and some legendary amounts of grinding that needed to be done, for a shitty little mobile RPG it wasn't actually that bad.  There was even a mode available to some phones where you could use an AR thing to take pictures with your demons in the real world but it didn't really have anything to do with the game itself.  So I'm going to use this post to sort of dream up what I think a proper Shin Megami Tensei AR game would be like and hopefully someone at ATLUS will stumble on this page and steal the idea.  Probably not but a mans gotta dream.

Your phone in this hypothetical game would take the place of the COMP or maybe the gauntlet from SMT IV.  In fact the gauntlet from SMT IV makes a little more sense because in that game you buy "apps" with "app points" as you level up allowing you to store more demons, get more skills or make various features cheaper.  From your phone then you'd manage your team, manage your items, buy player focused skills and you could probably put the Cathedral of Shadows in the main menu too.

The main meat of the game I suppose would be the same thing as Pokemon Go.  You would go outside, walk around and get into encounters on the map where you would fight demons. In those fights you could kill the enemies for EXP or you could do demon negotiation to recruit them into your party.  That of course isn't enough to hold an entire game by itself so you'd have to lift some things from Pokemon Go, mainly the raid system.  Instead of calling them raids though you could take a page from the Nocturne book at have "Fiend" battles where groups of players would fight a single enemy.  For the 6 people in the world that have played Dragon Quest Walk, sort of similar to how raid battles work in that.  When you beat a raid in Pokemon Go you are granted a chance to catch the rare monster but that wouldn't really work in a game like this, so pulling from the SMT3 book once again, a Fiend could drop a menorah that you could use to access a dungeon.  These dungeons would be separate from the walking around and be done in a first person view, a nod to the classic games for the long term fans, and in these dungeons you'd have a chance to get rare items and recruit strong demons.  Although it would be unfair to lock out players from this side of the game if they aren't strong enough to do the fiend encounters so randomly around the map you could spawn "Amala Terminals" or something like that.  Players could walk to these and take part in a sort of mini dungeon-crawl  and these areas would have their own loot and demons to gather.

Of course, this is just my personal dream of what an SMT AR Game would look like, I'm sure some actual game designer with many years experience over me could put something better together but it's nice to dream about something that could be.  Although, being really honest, I'd rather ATLUS just get SMT 5 out rather than focus on side projects like this.

 

First Impressions of Dragon Quest Walk

It's not often that a mobile game grabs my attention but the release of Dragon Quest Walk was one I was very excited for, especially coming off the back of Dragon Quest 11.  Before I go any further I have to warn you that as far as I know, this game is Japan only so if you don't live in Japan and don't care about how cool my new toys are then you may as well stop reading now

For those that do care however, Dragon Quest Walk is probably one of the best mobile games I've played ever.  It's got a decent amount of content considering it just launched, it's running special events already and if you're looking for a way to sort of "gamify" your power walks, this is a great way to do it with.

The way you play is very simple.  You start a quest and the game will ask you where on the google map you want to place your goal.  You then have to physically walk to the place you set the goal, fighting monsters along the way and when you arrive you'll be given a story tidbit or you'll fight a monster or something.  Rinse and repeat until your lean as fuck from all that walking.  If it sounds a bit repetitive that's because it is but DQ Walk strikes me as a game that is a fitness app first and an RPG second.  Unlike Pokémon Go, where you can sit in one place with a lure and catch monsters all day, DQ Walk DEMANDS that you be constantly moving.  Sitting in one place waiting for monsters to spawn means that you'll be quickly running out of HP and MP and eventually things to fight.  Keeping moving however and you can tap "heal pots" on the map to recover and get items and enemies will spawn at an increased rate.  The game also has a "milage" systems where every week you are tasked to break a certain number of pots, fight a certain number of encounters and walk a certain number of steps to acquire points which can then be traded for goodies.

There's other systems as well such as raids which I can't comment on because I've yet to do one.  There's a house system where you put an icon on your map that is your home and you can decorate it with furniture and whatnot and players are incentivized to visit your house because each house will have an item on the floor for you to get.  There's also a gatcha system which might make some people groan but at time of writing the gems and tickets for the gatcha are plentiful and getting a 5 star piece of equipment seems to be a fairly common occurrence.  There's some other things I haven't mentioned but if I tried to mention every little feature I'd be here all night

If you live in Japan and you're looking for an excuse to get out of the house and burn some calories, then DQ Walk is a good place to go.  If you don't live in Japan then I'm sorry for you and I really hope that the game gets an overseas release because for a free little mobile game about hitting slimes with swords, it's REALLY good.

I just want ONE AR zombie survival game

So a little while ago a friend of mine brought to my attention a game called mobile called The Walking Dead: Our World.  The game looked, at first glace, like a sort of Pokemon Go-esque thing where you go around killing zombies and it looked pretty cool.  However when I got home I found out that going around killing zombies with your phone camera seems to be the ONLY thing you do.  Granted I haven't played it yet and I'm such a sucker for TWD I'll at least give it a try but my disappointment is pretty high.

Ever since the success of Pokemon Go I've had this fantasy about an AR zombie survival game that would involve running around your local area to find supplies and fight for survival.  At the start of the game you'd register a location as your "base", it could be your home or place of work or wherever the hell you like.  You'd build up a base and gather survivors and every so often on the map little caches of supplies would pop up around the area your in.  You'd be tasked with going off and gathering supplies and keeping your camp alive but when you went out you'd be chased about by zombies (or whatever else) and if they caught you, you'd game over.  Maybe if you had a survivor in your camp it could act as an extra life or there could be some perma death system, I don't know, but I just want that kind of game to exist.

I got the same pangs of disappointment when I played Zombies Run, a sort of fitness app for mobile.  I thought it would be just that where I'd have to jog about collecting supplies but from the little I experienced of it, it's basically just a podcast you listen to while you go for a jog and the "fun" comes from the fact it asks you to run a bit faster every so often.  Not a bad app by any stretch but just not the zombie mobile survival game of my dreams.

So if you're a game developer and you stumble on this post, please go and make that above idea a reality.  I'm not a game dev so tweak it and make it actually good but at least give me a credit as "Blog Prick" or something like that.  I know zombies are an over saturated genre but I seriously feel like there's a lot of untapped potential in the world of zombie AR, someone needs to get on it.

Tau Vlogs: Pokemon Go

Portable Embarassment

So recently I've been playing Bravely Default on my 3DS and I think it's an awesome game but the opening scene pissed me off pretty hard.

So the opening scene in an AR scene which I wasn't able to do properly because I didn't have the card to hand.  Just in case there's anyone who doesn't know what I mean by that, an AR movie is something that uses the DS camera to play the cut scene in the "real world" so to speak.  An AR card is something that the camera detects and produces the characters on screen but I didn't have it so one of the things in the scene didn't play.

What did play was a scene where one of the characters gets swallowed up by some hole and makes a plea for help to the player.  The only problem is, she doesn't stay still and because it's AR you need to move the system around in order to keep track of where she is.  Now, while this is actually pretty cool, keep in mind that the DS is a portable system and I was watching this scene on a train.  So of course I'm stood up in a train car looking like a complete dumbass moving my DS around trying to keep track of the girl on screen.

What made it worse is that when she eventually stopped moving around, my system ended up directly in some guys face so it almost looked like she was being swallowed by the void inside a Japanese salaryman. 

I don't understand why they have to put this shit into portable games.  It's embarrassing having to do this shit and the companies who make these systems KNOW they are designed to be played outside.  Especially in Japan where there's almost always at least one person with their DS on a train so why include shit like this?

Of course, I just look silly waving my 3DS around but there are certain features which could even be considered dangerous.  My friend tells me, that on the DS version of Rayman when you make a checkpoint, the system plays the camera shutter noise.  This is fine but it plays out of the speakers even if you are wearing headphones, which is a real embarrassing kick in the dick.  But let's say I'm playing this shit in a subway and someone gets the wrong idea.  There's a lot of shit that could potentially go down if some person across from me thinks I'm taking sneaky photos.

What I'm NOT saying is that having these features in a in a portable game should be completely erased, but make them fucking optional.  Give an option to turn off the camera sound, let me use the thumb stick to move the in game camera for the AR scene in bravely default or something, don't FORCE me to look like a dick. 

Phoenix Wright had the right idea with the whole screaming "OBJECTION" into the microphone.  Sure, the idea of doing that would be embarrassing in a public place but if that was the case you could just push a button instead.  Then, if you were in the comfort of your own home you could take full advantage of that games silly but highly enjoyable feature.

Also I don't want anyone telling me "uhh, but you can skip that cut scene in Bravely Default", because you can go fuck yourself.  I shouldn't have to deny myself content out of fear of looking stupid on a system DESIGNED TO BE PLAYED OUTSIDE.  Also since this is the internet I know there are people who think like "well only children play portable systems in public" to which you can go double fuck yourself because 1) that much insecurity in a hobby that is now this widely enjoyed is quite frankly pathetic and 2) I live in Japan where, as previously mentioned, no one gives a fuck and pretty much everyone does it anyway.