Difficulty Nostalgia

I think everyone gets that nostalgic feeling some time.  When a memory of a game pops into your head and you get this uncontrollable urge to play it again.  When most people talk about their nostalgic experiences with a game they usually talk about a games quality, the game being either just as good or at lot worse than they remember it being.  One thing I noticed that people don't mention too much when talking about their trips into the past is difficulty.

The things I hear the most when people talk about older games the phrases I usually here are "yeah it still holds up today" or "man, that has NOT aged well".  I however had a strange case the other week when I decided to play the Vita remake of Muramasa: The Demon Blade, a game that came out on the Wii in 2009.  As I slashed my way across ye olde Japan the game played EXACTLY how I remembered it, ar least in terms of gameplay and fun factor but I found it to be WAY harder than I remembered.

I seem to remember the game being pretty easy back in 2009.  It was fast paced 2D hack and slash heaven and I don't remember getting a death until near the end of the game but in my current playthrough the second boss is pushing my shit in really hard.  I don't want to believe that I've gotten shit at games in my old age but it's either that or my memory of how well I did is WAY off.

This also occasionally happens in reverse where the game is way easier.  For me it was when I was learning how to speedrun Silent Hill 2 and I was dreading the maze near the end because in my mind it was complex and full of shit trying to kill you.  When it came to it though I blazed through it and none of the enemies came even close to touching me.

It's always fun to go back and play old games and it can suck when it doesn't live up to your expectations.  Although in my mind it kind of sucks a bit more when you go back to a game you thought you were good at only to find that you suck.

The Vita: Good System, Needs Some Work

I own both a Vita and a 3DS, so what I'm not here to do is have a stupid one man portable console war.  I will say very briefly though, that I do prefer my vita to my 3DS.  It feels better to use and the games on it (Project Diva F and P4G, for example) I feel like playing way more than anything on my 3DS.

Anyway, if you do a bit of googling around for the Playstation Vita, it's not hard to see that really it's not selling all that well.  It's not doing awfully badly in its own right but it keeps trailing behind basically every other system on the market.

Now Sony have made some good steps getting all these indie developers involved.  The inclusion of The Binding of Isaac and Hotline Miami on the Vita is really good, but if Sony want this thing to do well they need to do more.  I think the biggest problem is that while the system is a nice piece of hardware, there really isn't anything good to get people to buy it.

Sony got kind of lucky with me, since I had a great deal of my shit stolen.  The port of P4G and Muramasa made me really excited because I would be able to play updated versions without having to overspend on original PS2 and Wii copies, which was nice.  But one look around the shops in the EU make it very clear that the Vita isn't getting much love in the games department. 

The situation in Japan isn't much better either though.  The selection is far far greater out here than it is in Sweden or the UK, but the problem is that the current game library for the Vita is mimicking the late PSP library.  What I mean by this is that there is nothing that really stands out, everything is just school girl dating sims or generic looking anime RPGs that only the most hardcore otakus would be remotely interested in.

If Sony just buckled down and put out lets say, 3 absolutely stellar games with good amount of content and quality, sales would skyrocket I imagine.  The Vita is a really nice piece of kit, people just need something to fucking play on it.

The Final Batch of Japanese Purchases (For Now)

OK! I have no idea what's going on but blogger won't let me embed my own videos anymore.

So I just made a little vlog about the last couple of games I bought in Japan before I am due to leave the country on tuesday, you can check it out at this link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln0cosxVXUM

Sorry that I can't embed them like I used to, but I'm sure that one extra click wont kill you.  Enjoy!

If I find a way to fix it, I'll go and fix it at a later date.