Slay The Spire First Impressions

While I was drinking in a video game bar near my house, a friend of mine fired up this game on a laptop he brought on down and we had a merry old time playing this over a few drinks.  Granted I was a bit drunk when I tried it so if any details I mention now are off a little, forgive me, but I only did one run so it's not like I went that deep into it anyway.

Slay the Spire is a sort of Roguelike deck building game and if there is a story involved then I sure as fuck wasn't paying attention to it.  Basically there's a big spire and you gotta go fuck up all the demons inside it.  When you fire up the game you get a choice of either a warrior guy or a sort of thief type guy and for the one run I did with my buddy we played as the warrior.  From there you are given a map of levels and each level will have a battle or some kind of event that could either help or hinder you.  You fight your way through each map until you either are killed or you make it to the end which sounds easy but if you didn't know what I meant by "Roguelike" before, that means that death means you have to start all over again, no saves.

Anyway the big pull of the game is the whole deck building things.  At the start you're given a bunch of basic shit like attacks, blocks and a skill or two and as you progress you get more and more cards for your deck.  However just putting cards willy nilly is a sure fire way to get killed pretty quickly as you have to juggle things such as cost, synergy and deck size.  For example, if you clear a fight and are presented two cards that don't really fit well with your deck it might be better to pass so that you aren't drawing shit from a bloated deck later on.  Cards aren't gone once you use them either (unless it says "exhaust" on it), you just get 5 randomly each turn so keeping your deck well focused is pretty key.  You can also level up cards so they have greater effect and there are also non card relics (or artifacts or something like that, I forget the exact term) which you can equip for various buffs and effects.

While I did have great fun with the game, and the core deck building element is extremely solid, I have two big problems with Slay the Spire.  One is the fact it's early access, but only because I fucking hate early access with every inch of my being.  Granted, the developers are being very good with it and clearly are putting the effort in but I still can't bring myself to buy a game with that label on it.  If you stumble across this post AFTER the full release then disregard this point, obviously.  The other problem I have is the art style and general look of the game.  Now I'm no artist, I struggle to do stick figures in MS Paint but Slay the Spire just doesn't look like a game you'd spend money on.  It looks like the kind of game you would have found on Newgrounds back in the day, like the whole thing has been made in Flash or some shit.

However don't let that deter you from picking it up if you don't mind the early access because it's a pretty incredible game.  I didn't finish the one run I tried, I died somewhere fairly late in game so I'll be watching the updates carefully for the full release so I can have my revenge.

Cthulhu Fluxx

I know it's not strictly a video game but I played this a few weeks ago and fucking loved it so I'm taking a moment to talk about it.  Plus Cthulhu is one of those things that people love to go on and on about when talking about shit like Eternal Darkness and games like that so it's sort of related.

Fluxx itself is a sort of series of card games where the rules and the conditions for winning (or losing) change pretty rapidly during play.  I'm only just discovering that Fluxx is actually a huge thing I've been unaware of as I googled the above image.  Turns out there are tons of versions of this thing including Batman, Zombies, Cartoon Network and Monty Python just to name a couple outside of the original "Fluxx"

Anyway the game is simple, you draw a couple of cards at the start and then you have to draw 1 and play 1 each turn.  The deck consists of a number of types of cards including goals (how you win) keepers (stuff you want) and rules (self explanatory).  In Cthulhu Fluxx there are also Ungoals which make everyone lose and Creepers which prevent you from winning unless you end up with a fucked up goal on the table.  The game gets really interesting once players start throwing down rule cards such as Play All which means that whatever you have in your hand you have to throw it down right away.  When this shit starts happening players can go from really strong positions to really weak ones in an instant and seeing someone get fucked over is pretty satisfying

Another thing that makes this game so appealing is that you can play it very quickly.  Each game can take only a few minutes and won't really extend over about 20 at a stretch.  It's easy to understand so you can easily bring all your friends into the game quickly and it's surprisingly compelling to play.  We started the evening with my friend saying "I'll just show you this game real quick" and ended about 2 hours later like "Think we have time for one more?". 

You can pick it up at any sort of hobby shop I imagine or you can get it on Amazon for about £12.  Get some people together and give it a spin, it's fun as fuck.

The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage

I'm not above playing a phone game that has anime girls plastered all over it, quite the opposite.  After having a friend of mine talk my ear off about this game for a good while I finally decided to give it a try and I was actually pleasantly surprised with what I got.

Cinderella Girls is a rhythm game for you phone which boasts a pretty hefty number of tracks.  You hold the phone sideways and tap the 5 buttons at the bottom of the screen in time with the music

Taking a phone screen and hitting a note are pretty much impossible

While all the rhythm game stuff is going on you have a fully 3D dance routine going on in the background and each character in the game has their own 3D model.  This puts it above it's competitor Love Live because last time I played that it only had static backgrounds which made playing songs a little visually unappealing.

Like every phone game and it's dog though Idolmaster has a collection element and it comes in the form of collecting performers for your group.  This is done on the usual "gatcha" system where you pay some form of currency and then get given performers and items at random

From there you can arrange a team of whoever you like and using them in songs will net them fans and affection which you then use to gain special story sequences or "evolve" them to their next idol form.  It is worth noting as well that this game gives out premium currency like it's candy so finding yourself with a team of rare idols doesn't actually take all that long and finding items to level them up with is equally easy so you can see a decent amount of progress in a very short time.  While normal idols just have a mugshot for an image rarer idols have big fancy artwork so if you're the kind of person that likes their anime CG then you'll get a kick out of that.

My one real complaint about this game is that it seems to download content every 10 fucking seconds.  Phones have limited data and I use mine up fairly quickly watching stupid YouTube videos during my train rides so this game may not be a good idea if you're the kind of person who is concerned about their date usage.

Still, it's not a terrible title and for a free to play mobile rhythm game it's pretty fun.  It's not going be better than anything you could play in an arcade but not bad if you need a quick rhythm fix.

Hooked on Hearthstone

I remember when I first saw Hearthstone, I laughed a hearty laughed and said that the idea of a World of Warcraft trading game game was stupid.  Now look at me, sat in front of my computer logging onto Hearthstone daily for a quick round before work every morning like a big fat chump.

Seriously though, I like trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh but the idea of having to drop large amounts of money on little bits of paper really turns me off.  That's why this kind of thing in video game format is so appealing; I get to play the game but don't have to drop as much money on it.  However Yu-Gi-Oh games tend to be full of stupid crap and I find the Magic: The Gathering games to be extremely limiting.

Then Hearthstone comes along, which to most TCG snobs may be rather simplistic but it's fast, fun and best of all completely free.  All you have to do is download some Battle.net thing and you're pretty much good to go from there, just log in and get playing.

The game of Hearthstone is rather simple.  You pick a character based on a class from World of Warcraft and use your deck of minions and spells to drain their health from 30 to 0.  Each card has a mana cost from 1 to 10 and each hero has a special skill that costs 2 mana to perform.  For example the Mage can cast a fireball that will deal 1 damage which is great for a little DPS boost if you have some spare mana at the end of your turn.

Every single card available in the game is available for free, there is no jumping through pay gates to get more cards in Hearthstone.  For 150 in game gold you can buy a booster pack that contains 5 cards.  If you want to buy more packs at the same time it costs money, but the game doesn't limit you to how many packs you can buy.  It's a little annoying that you can't stack gold purchases but it's a small inconvenience.  You earn this gold by just playing the game, there is no way to buy gold from the in game store.  Every 3 wins in normal play mode, ranked or not, nets you 10 gold.  This sounds like getting a booster is a slow process but the game gets around this by providing the player with "daily quests".  A daily quest may be something like "win 2 games with X class" or "Kill X Minions" and each completed quest nets you 40 gold.

On top of that you can spend 150 gold to enter The Arena to get even better prizes such as more gold, boosters or dust for crafting.  You keep playing games until you hit either 12 wins or 3 losses, whichever comes first and you have to do it with a deck built out of randomly selected cards.  Even if you don't own the card you can use it in arena mode if you get lucky with the drafting, so really it's up to luck but your rank or anything like that is unaffected and the prizes are really good so it's worth doing.

Finally you can craft cards using some weird crafting system that I've not really used much since I started.  Basically you can disenchant cards you don't want into dust and then use that dust to craft new cards that you do want.  I've not yet played the game long enough to know what specific cards I want for my deck but I imagine this system will become very useful to me later.

So if you like card games I'd absolutely recommend Hearthstone.  Even if you don't like Warcraft, the game itself is fun to play so if you can get over the theme there's a good game here.  Best of all, you have absolutely nothing to lose.  You can play the game for hours and hours and spend 0 money like I have or you can drop a few bucks and get a nice handful of extra cards, but don't be disappointed if those cards don't give you much of an advantage.

Easily one of my favourite games of the year so far.

Metal Gear Acid

Even though I beat this game a while ago, it's taken me more than a month to actually get on the blog and talk about it because it's just a bit shit.

"No way!" I hear you say, "There's no way in hell a bad Metal Gear Solid exists!".  Well before you start getting upset with me for slagging off Metal Gear, I'm not, I love Metal Gear but MGA is a fucking mess.

Story wise it's a pretty classic Metal Gear setup.  There's a bunch of terrorists who have invaded some place and they are after something that isn't called Metal Gear but is blatantly Metal Gear and it's up to you to stop it.  Since I'm writing this so long after finishing it I've kind of forgotten some of the plot.  Mainly it involved Metal Gear, some shit on a plane and child experimentation but the fact I've forgotten the plot might clue you in to just how forgettable and lack luster it was.

But the story isn't the reason Metal Gear Acid is a fucking mess.  No, the story is just a bit dull but it's the gameplay that really makes this game just unenjoyable.  In case you're not aware, Metal Gear Acid isn't played like any other Metal Gear game because this is a card game.

That's right, a fucking turn based CARD game.

 You have a deck of cards that fall into different categories such as weapons, items, actions and special effects that are represented by different characters.  Every card is used to move around the board and lets you move 3 spaces, while special movement cards will allow for greater movement.  Every card also has a cost, so the better cards cost more to use and that means that you have to wait longer between each turn.

Now the reason this game is a load of bullshit is because everything you do is dependant on what kind of cards you draw.  It's fine at first but there are certain points in the game where you NEED specific cards to do specific things and if you don't get lucky and draw your card then you'll just be sat there discarding shit for 5 or 6 turns until the card you eventually DO want shows up.

An example of this is there is a level where you are required to snipe flying cameras so that you can cross a bridge.  By that point in the game I had maybe 3 or 4 sniper rifle cards available, but I lost the mission multiple times because the game wouldn't give me the fucking cards to use, so they would just eventually move into my half of the map and spot me, calling a bunch of guards to enter the level and fuck me all up.

Now I guess you could just say to me "well why didn't you go and get more sniper rifles then?", but the problem with that is the only way to really get more cards quickly without having to tediously grind out old levels is to buy booster packs.  A booster pack gives you 3 cards, and usually it gives you 3 shit ones.  Through my entire playthrough I only got one rare card in a booster and the rare was so shit that I ended up never using it.  The one good thing about the boosters is the variety in the packs.  For example, at the start you only have access to Metal Gear Solid 1 themed cards, but as you progress you unlock MGS2, 3 and even Metal Gear 1 and 2 themed cards, so if you're the kind of person who enjoys collecting digital cards then you have a lot to work with here.

I'm being overly harsh when I say Metal Gear Acid is a fucking mess, but it's certainly frustrating and sometimes VERY unfun to play with certain levels being made an absolute chore by the games fucking stupid card thing.  Still though, it's a unique take on the Metal Gear series and maybe the sequel that I've not played is way better, so it's at least worth a quick go on your PSP.

A Different Kind of Card

Think of this post as part 2 of things I found inside Swedish arcades.

So if you remember a long long time ago, I made a post talking about stat cards in Japan.  I used a picture of my old E-Amusement pass as the image and it looked like this.

Just so those who didn't read that post last summer don't have to dig through the archive, these cards are used for certain games inside Japanese arcades for tracking your play records and unlocking new things within the games.

Now if you look back to the first picture, you may notice there is a card reader strapped to that crazy taxi machine, but it's not for stat cards.  Sweden, unlike Japan or the UK doesn't have this nice convenient coin that you can just drop in like a £1 or 100 yen.  If my memory serves me correctly, the standard price for 1 credit in the arcade was something really awkward like 16 Kroner or some such nonsense so you have to swipe some kind of credit card in the machine in order to get a credit.

At least I think that's how it works, I don't know any Swedish and the one Swedish guy I do know doesn't know anything about games.  Still, the awkward pricing of arcade games out here just makes me yearn for a good Japanese game centre or even just a simple Time Crisis cabinet in a British cinema that takes a single fucking coin.

Sengoku Taisen

Break out those umbrellas because its about it get gushy again!  There is so much awesome in this game that it cannot be contained.  THIS is the reason why coin-op in Japan is so popular, the innovation and the ideas that you get with these kind of games is something that you can't really do as well with a console or PC game.

So what is this thing?  This is an arcade RTS game based in the warring states period of Japanese history.  If you are into your history stuff, then you'll like this game.  I personally never learnt anything about this era of Japanese history, but I had a friend who did and he got a colossal history boner for this game.

Well, apart from being an arcade game, what makes this different from any other RTS game out there?  Well let me show you

Well straight away you can see it already looks a  ton different from any other arcade machine you have probably seen.  Well let me show you yet another thing.

Those are cards!  That's right! this is a trading card game as well as being an RTS!  Each card represents a general and his or her unit of troops.  Each card is then split into one of many types such as gunners, spear men, archers, cavalry etc. You then place these cards on the machine, and where they are on the machine dictates where they are in game.  So to move a unit, you simply slide the card across the playing field.  I have a video of this which will be shown at the bottom.  Basically it's fuckin' AWESOME and it makes the game very fast.  You have a lot of decisions to make very quickly and correct positioning is key to winning.

There is also a lot of depth here too.  Each card has a sort of points value.  You can only take 8 or 9 points worth of generals into a game, so you have to try and choose units that complement each other.  On top of that, they are all split into their various armies, so you get a bonus for choosing all generals from the same type of army.  The next thing to consider is that each general has a special ability that you can activate mid battle, so choosing abilities that go well with your play style is another thing you have to worry about.  Then FINALLY you have these in game magic type items that have various effects such as increasing strength or lowering the death timer on a fallen unit, so you really have to put a lot of planning into how your going to tackle a battle.

Example of a prep screen

There are also a few different modes to chose from when you fire up the game. 

So, going from left to right.  First you have the local battle mode, where you and a friend on the same bank of machines can play against each other.  Next you have the world battle mode.  Each machine is hooked up to the Internet, and it will search all of Japan to hook you up with an online game to play.  The standard here is pretty high so you might wanna try and get some good cards before trying this one.  Then there is the story mode, where you can pick an army and play through their campaign, the battles here aren't TOO easy, but they won't kick your ass like a human opponent will.  Finally is the tutorial mode for all the newbies out there.

So you maybe thinking now "but if the standard of play is so high, I'm going to have to drop loads of money on boosters right?" WRONG!  The absolute best thing about this game, is that when you finish, the machine spits new cards at you as a reward for playing, win or lose.  1 credit is one card, and you get discounts of playing 3 consecutive times, so each session, while maybe a little pricy for a standard arcade game, at least you get a lot out of it.  The final thing to mention in this overview is that each card levels up independently.  In order to play the game, you need something called an Aime card.

This is a stat card used for a few games, but in this case it tracks your player data, army experience and what items you have as well as your online records.  You can't play without one, but it's cheap anyway.

One thing I just realised I forgot to mention was this thing

You will see this thing near every bank of Sengoku Taisen machines, and when they aren't showing adverts like in my photo, they are usually running replays of online matches from the top ranking players.  So you can even get some tips from the best by watching this thing for a while.

If you find yourself in Japan and you have time to give this a whirl, DO IT!  It's a little bit pricy but it's so much fun, worth every single goddamn yen. 

HAVE SOME VIDEOS!