I have a Japanese exam coming up soon and the chances of me passing it are pretty fucking slim. This is one of the reasons that content has been so thin on the ground and it's partly because when I'm not eating, sleeping or wanking I've replaced a lot of my gaming time with studying. This means that the only gaming I've been doing for the last few weeks has been little bouts of mobile games during my commute to work or lunch break or streams of Resident Evil 4.
So mobile gaming is shit but not for the reason you might think. A lot of people rag on mobile gaming but actually in recent years it's been getting a lot better. You still have your cheaply made puzzle games and various shit quality rip offs of whatever the mobile hit du jour is but it's a lot easier to find something of at least some quality now than it used to be.
For example I've clogged up my phone with a whole bunch of games such as the Shadowverse, a card game which makes Hearthstone look like a soggy pile of shit, Idolmaster, a rhythm game with a staggering number of songs for a free to play, Gyrosphere, a slow version of Monkey Ball and Perchang a fun little puzzler that I play while taking a shit. Not to mention all the ports of actual games that exist on the app store now, mobile, at least from a selection stand point, isn't as painfully awful as you might think.
However I still fucking hate it because phones were just not designed for gaming and playing games on these things is a highly frustrating experience and a lot of the time I'd rather do my own wisdom teeth surgery than deal with the shit that these games are causing me.
For example, phones do EVERYTHING nowadays but they also have limited space. So it's all well and good having a decent selection of games but eventually you'll probably have to delete them for apps that are actually useful or so you can take a picture of that stupid cat you saw on the street yesterday. But let's say that's not an issue for you because you're one of those weirdos that bought the million gig version of your phone, the controls are still shit. Touch screen controls are wank outside of tapping or sliding, as soon as you have to start making precise movements or, god help you, playing with one of those stupid on screen D-Pads (Like in Sonic CD) playing the game becomes insanely annoying. But OK, maybe you're a fucking twat who bought one of those controller add ons instead of just buying a portable system, the biggest problem with mobile gaming is the battery.
Games eat battery life faster than your mum eats sweet and sour pork at the all you can eat Chinese buffet. Pokemon Go was the best example of this where playing the game for about an hour would drain you from 100 to about 60. Any game beyond a shitty angry birds clone tends to destroy your battery and this problem is made worse if your phone has a little bit of age on it so the battery life isn't quite what it used to be either. I started my lunch break yesterday at 80%, played 2 games of Shadowverse and was knocked down to about 20. On the other hand I can grab my PSP and finish Ys1 Chronicles about 8 times before the battery light even starts blinking. Yes, I know portable chargers exist but that's just another fucking thing I have to buy with my hard earned cash to play games that just quite frankly aren't as good as proper portable games.
It's nice to see the quality of mobile gaming go up but the hardware just isn't appropriate for any kind of meaningful gaming experience without being tethered to a wall socket or spending a decent amount of cash on extra bits. Hopefully in a few years I'll be able to make a post talking about mobile gaming being the bees knees and praising how far it's come but by that time I'll probably be dead.
Showing posts with label Idolmaster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Idolmaster. Show all posts
Thursday, 1 December 2016
Wednesday, 5 October 2016
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
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.
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
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| Taking a phone screen and hitting a note are pretty much impossible |
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.
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