Skullgirls DLC is Disgusting

Skullgirls is a game I've not played, but looks pretty good and I'll be getting it on Steam once it's released.

Quality of the game aside though, while looking at the Steam store page I found something pretty rage inducing that I would like to share my thoughts on.  A long time ago I made a blog post about how Palette swapped enemies and characters in games are a bunch of lazy bullshit, go read that here.

http://identitygaming.blogspot.se/2012/07/now-thats-some-bullshit-2-palette-swaps.html

Now unless your Mortal Kombat, where your passing off swaps as new characters, doing this in fighting games isn't so bad.  Like in Street Fighter, being able to change Ryu's clothes or Sakura's school uniform from their standard colours to something that you find more appealing or something funky is cool, it lets you personalise your character a bit.

So those features were kind of cool and you liked it right? Well now, at least in Skullgirls, if you want to personalise your character just a tiny bit you have to fucking pay for that shit now.  Something that was a standard feature in pretty much every fighting game I've ever played is now being passed off as fucking DLC.  Also before anyone wants to tell about how cheap it is, I don't give a fuck, no one should have to pay for fucking palette swaps.

I can't remember if it was Persona or Blazblue or whatever but I remember in one of those guys you could pick like a section of clothes or part of the character, and then choose from like 60 odd colours so that you could really make something that you liked.  Sure it's a small thing, but making that a paid add on is fucking arse.

But you know what, I don't blame the developers, I blame the people who buy it.  You can't fault a bunch of people who want to make money on their game, and sure, if people are willing to pay for stuff that has come standard for years, then why not?!  Their the fucking idiots eating it up and telling them it's OK to pull that shit.  What's worse is that I found a community website with this announcement on it and people were fucking loving it!  I couldn't believe it.

Well whatever, I suppose I'm getting overly annoyed about a small thing, but it shouldn't fucking be this way! Goddamnit!  You are being charged for the dev to use the fill tool, think about that.

Persona 4 Ultimate

Persona 4 Ultimate is the new 2D fighting game to hit Japanese game centres, and, according to wikipedia, came out yesterday for the PS3 and Xbox360 in Japan.  America and the EU are getting it in August.

For anyone who may not know, Persona is a spin-off series of games in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise.  Shin Megami Tensei is kinda like pokemon, but for real men.  SMT is an extremely challenging and unforgiving series and when you do eventually beat one of them it's one of the most satisfying things ever.

However, Persona 4 Ultimate isn't a RPG at all.  Like I said in the first sentence, P4U is a 2D fighting game and contains no RPG elements whatsoever.  That said, the game is actually a blast to play on 2 levels.  The first level of fun is what I like to call the fanwank level.

Above is a picture of the character select screen, and I swear the version I played in the game centre had more characters available.  But my point is, if you're a fan of the Persona games, you're probably gonna get your rocks off to kicking the shit out of the Persona 3 and 4 cast as your favourite character. 

The other level of fun to be found here is in the gameplay itself.  The game is developed by Arc System Works, who gave us amazing fighters such as Blazblue and Guilty Gear, so you know this shits going to be good.  As a result of this however, the characters all feel like characters straight out of Blazblue and there is a little sense of this being an excuse to reskin that game and make a shitton of money off the Persona series popularity.  But you know what?  I'm not going to get angry about that! Arc System Works have done a good job of providing and solid fighting game that doubles up as fanwank, and even though it is very similar to Blazblue, it does seem to be just different enough to qualify as its own thing rather than a cheap Blazblue knockoff.

So warm up those arcade sticks because you're in for a treat with this one.  It doesn't matter if you like Persona or not, if you like fighting games then you'll like this I'm sure.