Neo-Persona's Insane Game Over Mechanic

 

Persona 3 Reload is on the horizon and I'm sort of torn about it.  On the one hand I am completely fucking sick to death of remakes.  The constant remaking and remasting of various games that were already good is tiring. It feels like a big chunk of the industry at the moment, both AAA and indie, are just constantly re-treading old ground for nostalgiabucks and safe bets rather than pushing anything even remotely creative.  On the other hand though, Persona 3 has a number of glaring issues that probably need fixing and could be fixed in a remake.  For example, the biggest example actually, Tartarus is one of the most boring dungeons ever conceived not only just for Megami Tensei but for JPRGs just in general.  Hundreds of floors of samey bullshit with the most monotonous music ever written, it's actually fucking awful.  Juding from the gameplay trailers we have of Reload so far it looks like that won't get fixed and this whole thing is pointless but we've seen very little so far so let's withold judgement for now.

But what I really want to talk about is a problem that has plagued Persona since the third game and is probably the most annoying aspect of the franchise and that's the instant game over on main character death.  This isn't something that's new to SMT, there are a number of games in non-Persona entries that also have this mechanic.  For example Shin Megami Tensei 5 also has this feature but in that and other games it sort of makes sense.  In the other entries in the series you are a demon summoner of some description, either through some kind of magic or the series mainstay, the COMP, so when you eat shit the control you had over your party of accumulated demons gets broken and they leave you to die.  That's what you get for relying on demons from hell to help you fight God, I suppose.

But in Persona it's a different story.  You aren't negotiating with demons, (mostly, 5 is the exception but even then it's different) you are a group of high school friends, quite close knit ones we are led to believe, going into a shadow world to fight weird Carl Jung bullshit. So when you eat shit in those games the instant game over makes absolutely ZERO sense.  You can be surrounded by characters that are holding actual kilograms of Revival Beads in their pockets and monsters in their brain that can use magic to revive you but instead they leave you for dead, fade to black, game over.

What makes this even worse is that this never happened in Persona 1 or 2.  The MC or Maya in those games can eat a big attack and have their HP reduced to zero but their friends are able and more than likely will pick them up before the battle is done.  Imagine if you had the ability to revive people from the dead with a magic spell and while you're walking down the street someone rolls up and shoots one of your parents in the face with a shotgun. You aren't just going to run away, you're gonna wait for the guy to leave and then pick them up and dust them off, right?  Makoto, Yu and Ren all have the worst fucking friends of all time.

What makes this mechanic even worse is that SMT has spells such as Mudo and Hama which, if they connect, insta-kills you.  If it's your first playthrough and you are unaware that demons in whatever dungeon you are in are packing those spells then there is a fairly high chance that you are going to take one right to the chops and lose a bunch of progress.  Obviously there's counterplay to this with you being able to fuse Persona's that have resistances to this stuff or null it outright but if you don't know it's coming then kiss your progress through the dungeon goodbye.

I hope it's a feature that Persona 3 Reload changes.  Hell, I would be OK with the next player turn being forced by the AI to use a revival bead or a recarm spell and you only get a game over if you have no items in your inventory OR you are completely out of MP.  At least then your friends being unable to revive you makes sense for a game over rather than they just run away from your unconcious body as soon as you get knocked out ONE time.

At the end of the day, just get better fucking friends

The Last of Us Part 1 Is Pointless (and stupid)

 

Oh boy here we fucking go again. 

I remember when The Last of Us: Remastered came out on PS4 and I had all sorts of nasty things to say about that because is there anything more obviously money grubbing than "remastering" a game only a year after the release of the inital version?  Well history does like to repeat itself as yet another lazy cash grab from the hacks at Naughty Dog, who haven't done anything other than bottom of the barrel, shallow dross since the early 2000s I might add, are doing yet ANOTHER version of the first Last of Us game.

See, there is nothing inherently wrong with a remastering of a game as evidenced by the release of Resident Evil on the Gamecube. 

 When this came out it was cool to see because there was a 6 year gap between the release of the original and this one and in that time there were HUGE leaps in graphical tech and game play conventions.  We went from the game having cereal box people walking around on low poly pre-renders to models that actually looked like people walking around some really high detail environments.  On top of that the game was changed up a little with some additional mechanics, new areas and new bosses and a few other things.  When this came out it was absolutely incredible to play.

The problem with The Last of Us Part 1 is that even though there is technically a bigger year gap (9 years) the tech hasn't jumped up quite as dramatically as it had back then and game play conventions have become a homogenised mess that even the PS3 version back then was very much playing into.  If what I've read about the game is true also there is no extra content or nothing particularly special about it so it's literally a case of throwing it into an up-res machine, spitting it out and charging $70 for it.  It's disgraceful, lazy bullshit and the fact that anyone is even remotely excited for absolutely boggles my mind.  

If I'm being really honest, if a company MUST wallow in their back catalogue I'd rather they remake a game entirely rather than just remaster it and slap a new price tag on it.

For example I'm much more a fan of something like the Final Fantasy VII Remake because is's basically an entirely new game.  The good thing about a remake over a remaster is that it's not really a replacement for the original game and therefore feels like almost an entirely new experience.  If I want to go back to my 3 disc semi-turn based RPG with Duplo people on the PS1 then I can pop that game into my PS1 and enjoy that.  Then if I want to play a stealth-sequel retelling of those events with real time combat and modern graphics, I can play that and now both the old and new retain equal value. The same thing goes for the Resi 2 Remake.  If I want to enjoy some classic zombie murdering with tank controls, RE2 is right there for me to enjoy and if I want the same thing but a bit more modern then I can fire up the remake and enjoy both the game and the ugliest 3D burger ever produced by an artist ever made.

If The Last of Us Part 1 had waited, let's say, 10 more years to come out.  When the first game was nothing more than a memory in some old mans mind and then he could re-live that memory in 2032 turbo-graphic-o-vision then I wouldnt mind.  If the game had been added too, or reworked in some way akin to REMake then I also wouldnt have minded.  But as it stands The Last of Us Part 1 seems like a soulless, lazy, cash grab pile of bullshit because Naughty Dog KNOW they can milk your comfort zone to cash and they are willing to do it, as hard as possible, with absolutely no remorse

Shameful bullshit

2021: A Year For Extreme MegaTen Hype

I'm a bit of a cynical bugger when it comes to new releases, I sort of just assume that everything that's coming out is shit so that when I buy it and it ends up being shit I don't feel too put out.  As a result of this cynicism I tend to ignore things like Nintendo Directs because I don't give a shit about anything they have to say and if something interesting does happen either someone will tell me or I'll just see it on a shelf at some point after release day.  But good lord do I regret not checking out the Nintendo Direct last night because HO-LY SHIT there was some good news to come out of that one.

Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne was a game on PS2 that came out in 2003 and as quite frankly one of the best games on the system.  For the completely uninitiated the game is sort of like grim-dark Pokémon only the goal of a Shin Megami Tensei game isn't so much to collect them all but to survive whatever apocalypse is going on and maybe punch some Gods in the face.  You negotiate with and collect demons to put them in your party and fight with them in a sort of Pokémon-esque way but that's pretty much where the similarities end.

One of the reasons I personally am so happy about this news is because Nocturne is a game that's stupidly expensive to buy here in Japan.  Over here there were 3 versions of the game released, a standard version, a 'Maniax' edition and a third one that featured Raidou from the Devil Summoner series instead of Dante from Devil May Cry.  The standard edition is pretty fairly priced but it's lacking a lot of the features that the Maniax one does.  The Maniax edition, the one we got over in the west, costs about $200 and the one with Raidou costs even more than that.  This remake version is going to apparently cost $60 and is the Raidou version of the game which means that my wallet is just as happy as I am.

But that's not all!  Shin Megami Tensei 5 also got another trailer and it's extremely exciting to see that the game hasn't been forgotten about despite not hearing anything about it for a VERY long time.  The first announcement for SMT5 was the only reason I bought a Switch in the first place.  I don't give a flying rat fuck about Zelda or Mario or whatever tired Nintendo IP is being churned out but I care very much about being able to play SMT5 on the day it comes out.

Not only is this news extremely exciting but it's also extremely funny.  One quick look at Twitter and the amount of crying from various parties had me giggling all throughout my day.  Nintendo fans were butthurt because it wasn't Smash news or something, despite the fact they very clearly stated it was a partner presentation and Persona fans (an SMT spinoff series designed for braindead twats, myself included) were EXTRA butthurt because they have been clamoring for a Switch port of Persona 5 for a good while now.  There was even a small group of butthurt Persona fans crying about how P5Scramble, a Dynasty Warrriors knockoff set in the Persona 5 universe hasn't been localized yet.

July 21st was an extremely good day for MegaTen fans and we can only hope that the success of SMT3 remake will maybe trigger a remake of Digital Devil Saga or maybe, the best game in the franchise, Jack Brothers.  We can dream

Creatively Bankrupt at Capcom

Capcom used to be one of the biggest and best companies out there.  Street Fighter, Megaman, Dead Rising, Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry, the list goes on forever of great franchises under their belt.  While some of their stuff has gone a bit stale like Megaman, recent releases like Resident Evil 7 show the company clearly still has it somewhere.

Recently they released news that they were remaking Resident Evil 2.  This remake not just being like the RE1 remake on the Gamecube back in those days, but a full on remastering where it's all new fangled over the shoulder stuff now and basically nothing like Resident Evil 2 at all.  Sarcasm aside it doesn't look too bad, even if it's not the remake I wanted or hoped for, it'll probably still be, at the very least, a good game.  However the hype surrounding the remake has set off some money alarms at Capcom headquarters and they have realized that remaking old games=BIG BUCKS.  They have said they are going to "explore" the idea of remaking more of their older games.

This may be exciting for some people that we may be getting nice shiny new versions of Dino Crisis or whatever but to me this news screams that they now have an excuse to be lazy.  Now that they know that remaking old games will generate hype AND dollars, why bother trying to make anything new?  If you google "upcoming Capcom games" the three titles that appear at the top of the search are Devil May Cry 5, Megaman 11 and Deep Down.  So two sequels and Souls-looking dungeon crawl.  Google that in six months and it'll probably just be a list of remakes and a tweak to Street Fighter.

Maybe I'm just mad and cynical because I'm sick of seeing remakes and sequels EVERYWHERE.  Of course, gaming isn't devoid of it's original IPs, there's plenty of indie devs and other companies putting out original stuff but I just feel that it's a shame that a big lad like Capcom isn't using the piles of money it has to try something different.  Let's at least hope that if they do start churning out remakes, they are at least of good quality.

Crash Bandicoot HD Marathon Update

So as you may or may not know, the incentive for the Crash Bandicoot HD marathon was met a little while ago and now I have some information regarding the event for you.

So I'm planning to run the event on the 24th February and I will play Crash Bandicoot HD on PS4 until I have either finished all 3 games or played for 24 hours.  Now I feel that Crash 1 is a little bit of a challenge but Crash 2 and 3, if memory serves, are pretty easy to at least finish.  So in order to spice things up a bit, I'm adding a stretch incentive to make things a little bit more interesting.

Between now and the end of Crash 3 if an additional £100 are donated to the charity I will play the 3 games to 100% (no DLC) or until I hit the 24 hour mark.  As a backup, if that goal gets met and for some reason I at least don't finish the 3 games in 24 hours, I'll take a rest and then dedicate the 25th to playing even more Crash HD to get as close to 100% as I possibly can.

As always, big thanks to everyone who has donated for this and everything else so far!  Keep the kindness coming and keep supporting IG! It means a lot!

That Nintendo Direct

So last night this Nintendo Direct went down that I didn't watch but I sure as fuck caught all the information about it via my Facebook and Twitter feed.  Now I don't yet own a Switch and I sure as fuck want one.  They've been restocked in a bunch of stores near me and I'm definitely not lacking the funds for the thing but I just can't bring myself to pick one up and this mini direct pretty much made it clear in my mind why.

On the surface, the Direct was pretty cool.  They announced a whole bunch of titles that were coming to the Switch including a port of Dark Souls and (another) remake of The World Ends With You with a new extra campaign bit stapled on the end which kind of made me a little excited.  But that's exactly the problem, there's nothing new on the Switch AT ALL.  It's either ports, sequels or ports of sequels getting released and that goes for the direct and the current library of games.

Think for a second about what you're getting excited for here.  Just taking the two games that I'm the most interested, Dark Souls came out originally in 2011, that makes it nearly 7 years old.  TWEWY came out in 2007, that's over 10 years ago!!!  Not that remaking or remastering these games (depending on how you view it) is a bad thing but is it really worth sucking the Switches dick for doing so?  I've been playing this game for a long as time and the system is going to have to do more than that to sell me.

Now I understand that some people haven't played these games, especially TWEWY, so for some it's a reason to be legitimately excited but I get the impression that if you've been gaming for a long time and you have eclectic tastes then the Switch right now just isn't for you.  It's a shame too because it's a really cool piece of kit that I WANT to own but I just can't quite justify the purchase yet.

All that said though, Shin Megami Tensei 5 will be dropping at some point and despite it being a sequel I'm an absolute sucker for that series so I'm going to HAVE to buy one at some point.  I just wish the system had a bit more originality going for it.  I'm sure one day it'll happen and when it does I'm going to run to the nearest shop with a fat wad of cash and buy it all.

What excited you the most about the Direct?  What games from the current library are you enjoying?  Leave a comment and let me know!

Dragons Crown: Money Grub Edition

So I was talking with my friend the other day and he said that all I do is complain on here, like I'm full of nothing but rage and negativity.  This may be partly true so I planned a bunch of blog topics so that the next handful of posts would be nothing but sunshine and rainbows but then I saw this and now I can't help complaining again.

Dragons Crown is a game that was released in 2013 for the PS3 and Vita and was a bit of a side scrolly hack and slashy affair and if there's one thing I can't be mad about it's the game itself.  If you haven't played Dragons Crown I would totally suggest picking up a copy and giving it a spin, it's really fucking fun. 

So ATLUS did this a while ago with a similar game called Odin Sphere which was awesome.  The original Odin Sphere came out on PS2 and playing a PS2 game on a modern TV can look a bit crappy, which was a shame for a game with such a beautiful art style.  Not only did it get a bit of a facelift though, it came with some extra content and tweaks to game play which made it worth buying.  I have no problem re releasing an older game if it has some, even just a little, extra or different shit in it to warrant the purchase.

Dragons Crown on the other hand is a different tale.  This is a game from just the last generation that looks just fine on the PS3.   It's not like the PS4 can do all that much to improve the look of that game really, the generational face lift is not needed here.  It feels like that sort of pointless remake that's put out just  to milk a bit of extra money from the fans, kind of like the "HD" version of The Last of Us.  Not only that though but from what I can tell after reading some of the news stories about this game, there is NOTHING new in terms of content.  The only thing I can find is that it contains all the original games original features.  It's a fucking sad day when the fact that we're not having anything removed from a remake is noteworthy.

Unless for some weird reason you don't own a PS3 (or a Vita), don't buy the £50 pro edition of the game.  Just go find a PS3 or Vita version in a store or on Amazon or something.  At time of writing the original PS3 version is available on Amazon for like £30 so save yourself the money and get the exact same game at a much lower price.

Finally the thing that irks me is the name.  It's not Dragons Crown: Remaster, it's Dragons Crown Pro Edition.  With a name like that you'd expect it to be tweaked to be harder or something.  Like, the PS2 SMT RPG Lucifer's Call (Or Nocturne depending on where you're from) in Japan has something called a "maniacs edition".  This is the version that featured slightly tougher combat, an extra hard as fuck side quest and Dante from Devil May Cry.  There's nothing "pro" about this version over the other one, it's just the same fucking game with some slightly better graphics.

Anyway, go try Dragons Crown because it's fucking sick, just don't pay out the nose for this version and grab it on PS3.  ATLUS have been good in the past with shit like P4G so don't let them get away with this crap.

Losing Hope for Final Fantasy 7 Remake

I was going to make this little rant post the day that the trailer hit but I'm glad I held off because the bullshit got worse in the small span of time I waited in order to write this post.  Before I go on I just want to clarify that I desperately want this game to not suck, I want it to be good but all the evidence that is being given to me right now is pointing to this remake being full of shit and betrayal.

So first let me post the trailer so you can watch it if you haven't seen it already

Looks pretty exciting right?  I mean the good thing is that the visuals are awesome and it's kind of nice too see all the old Duplo charactes from the PS1 game finally being brought to live with a more realistic look.  I only really have one complaint about the  game visually and that's the choice that they made for Barret.  At what point in time between them finishing the adventure on PS1 and restarting it on PS4 did he decide to become a hard core Wesley Snipes impersonator?   While it's kind of dumb looking like Wesley Snipes isn't exactly a bad thing so that's nothing more than a minor nitpick.

But there are 2 big things in this trailer that throw up red lights.

The first one is the combat that is shown.  No longer do we have the ATB fights from the original and instead we are given this weird Kingdom Hearts-esque combat that's entirely in real time.  Now I'm not some kind of prick who thinks that there's something inherently wrong with real time battles but in FF7 I can see the new combat system making a lot of fights piss easy.  No longer will you have to carefully manage materia, equipment and limit gauges in order to overcome your foes.  No, you'll just be able to fucking dodge everything in real time (I bet there will be some kind of rolling feature) and all the enemies will have either stupid telegraphs that make it easy to predict whats coming or undodgeable screen filling bullshit.  I'm sure they'll change the combat to make the already existing fights more challenging but generally speaking action RPGs are piss easy and I'm sure there are plenty of fans that are sad that the old ATB system that they knew and loved has now gone.

The other part of the trailer that set my alarm bells off is right before they start showcasing the combat.  Cloud is surrounded by a bunch of guards on a road above some train tracks in the middle of Midgar.  Now, if you'll recall back to the original game you can choose to either fight them or run away and after 3 fights or so cloud hears a train horn and makes his escape by jumping on the top of the train.  

Now, in the trailer for the remake something weird happens.  Cloud winces and the screen gets covered in some light static and he starts to run for the train tracks.  I KNOW this isn't the way the game transitions into combat because the first fight they show is from a completely unrelated bit of Midgar and it does eventually cut to the part on the bridge, also the combat in this section is already done with when cloud makes his escape.  So what's the big fuckin' deal?  Well this small detail points to one possibility and that's that they are changing the story which to me would be unforgivable.  I don't mind them making small dialogue changes here and there but the overall plot has to stay the same otherwise this remake is going to become a giant piece of betrayal.  FF7s plot may be a little bit silly and nonsensical in some places but that's what makes it FF7 you can't just go changing it now after all these years all willy nilly without upsetting a lot of people.

There are other things to nitpick at too such as the fucking TERRIBLE English voice work.  I've not looked to see if there's a version of this trailer with Japanese voices but the English voice actors really sound like they are phoning it in.  Also the exploration game play that they show is a little uncomfortably close to Final Fantasy 13 but I  think that's just the nature of the area rather than being an indication of the game as a whole.

But here's the reason I'm glad I waited a day before writing

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/12/07/psx-2015-final-fantasy-7-remake-will-be-a-multi-part-series

What the actual fuck, go and fuck yourself Square-Enix.  Multi-part games are bullshit on their own but there is NO FUCKING WAY this should be in multiple entries.  I don't give a flying fuck what the reason is, just release it as a whole, complete game.  When I buy an RPG, especially one that's a remake of a PS1 game from 199 fucking 7 I don't expect to have to wait months between key moments in the story.  The original was technically speaking in "parts", as in there were 3 discs and those disc changes came at key moments in the story but at least all 3 discs were packed in the fucking box upon purchasing the game.

This is just a cheap, shitty way to milk the fan base for as much money as humanly possible.  Of COURSE the hardcore fans are going to buy every single fucking part because it's a PS4 remake of their favourite PS1 game, it's guaranteed profit from people who have been waiting for this shit since that really old PS3 tech demo where they showed the opening in "next gen" graphics.

This would be like someone selling me the PS1 version for like £20 but only giving me the first disc and then making me wait a few months and charge me ANOTHER £20 for the next disc.  This isn't going to be some budget game with parts that cost £10 or less, I can almost guarantee that each part is going to be full game price and if it doesn't turn out that way I'll gladly let someone punch me in the face for falsely accusing Square Enix of being money grubbing little cunts.

Well whatever, I have no doubt in my mind that at the very least the Final Fantasy 7 remake will be a good game.  The only problem is that it will be so drastically different from the game we played back in the day that I'll be left unimpressed and pissed off.  I don't want to play Final Fantasy 7: Kingdom Hearts Combat Edition, I want to play fucking Final Fantasy 7 with fancy new graphics.  If you're going to go to all this length to make what is essentially a new fucking game, then just make a new fucking game.

Let's just give it some time and maybe things will get better but OH BOY I FUCKING DOUBT IT

Marathon Roundup and Remake Thoughts

So it's finally over, I played Final Fantasy 7 for 24 hours and surprisingly made a lot less progress than I thought I would.  Despite that, the marathon was a great success and I have to give a great amount of thanks to everyone who joined in and supported the stream, you guys are awesome.

First I'll say a couple of words about the marathon itself.  Over a 24 hour period you guys managed to donate a total of £315 to the Alzheimer's Society so congratulations to you guys for pulling off something that awesome.  As much as I enjoy playing these games, the fact that you guys are willing to take part in the charity side of things and donate make it all so worth it, so once again thank you so much.  It was a lot of fun but incredibly hard during the final few hours and I probably wouldn't have made it if it wasn't for the continued support of the fans and the dudes with me in the room.  There's actually a lot of bullshit in Final Fantasy 7 that I'd forgotten about and the pace of the game is actually a lot slower than I remember.  As enjoyable as it is I think there is a lot of nostalgia that comes into play when people give it such high praise.

This in turn got me thinking about the remake that was announced during the last E3.  There's a lot of weird stuff in Final Fantasy 7 that I can't see translating very well to a full HD release with fancy new graphics.   The biggest example of this off the top of my head is the part in disc 2 where Cloud pulls a Sonic the Hedgehog and does a loop the loop through a tunnel to reach a certain part of a dungeon.  I just can't see how that scene would look with today's fancy realistic graphics and this is just one of the more extreme examples.  There are plenty of parts in that game that I tried to envision in PS4 mode that would just be weird and after a while the idea of a remake started to worry me. 

Still, we should kind of know what to expect since we had Advent Children and Crisis Core give us a vague idea of what the world of FF7 looks like on modern hardware.   Square have a very hard line to walk between making fans cream their pants or making them scream betrayal at the top of their lungs but only time will tell which side of this fence we will be on.

Final Fantasy 7, despite all the silliness that goes down, is a great game and if there are any RPG fans that have somehow not played it then I fully recommend it.  Maybe play it in more manageable chunks than 24 hours but it's a damn good game and it's well deserving of the following that it has.  Just don't take it so seriously or else you run the risk of getting pissed off with it and putting it down.  Take everything with a pinch of salt and just enjoy the rich world and great combat and you're in for a good time.

The New Resident Evil Is a Little Pointless

One game that was released recently was something that I have dubbed ReREMake and while I'm not entirely complaining about it's release I can't help but feel that this is another pointless re-do of a game that didn't really need remaking/porting anymore.

For those that don't know, back in 2002 Capcom released a remake of Resident Evil 1 for the Nintendo Gamecube and it wasn't just a straight up port of the original game, oh god no.  Resident Evil on the Gamecube, which people used to called REMake was Resident Evil 1 on fucking steroids.  The graphics were overhauled like crazy and looked fucking beautiful and they tweaked the game play a little bit for the new version.  On top of that they added a bunch of extra shit to the game so even veterans of the PS1 classic had something new to experience, it was awesome.

So then ReREMake comes along and while I'm not particularly angry about it like I was with The Last of Us Remastered, it still seems completely fucking pointless.  It's not too expensive but on Steam ReREMake will set you back £15 which is a fair price I guess for a game like this.  That said, Amazon UK have the Gamecube version going for prices as low as £6.50 and nearly every motherfucker I ever met had a Gamecube so why not just go dust that off and save yourself £10.  For me in Japan, I can walk round the corner and get the PS1 version in any used game shop ever for 100 fucking yen so trying to justify a £15 purchase for a game I've already played a million times is kind of hard.

Still though, while it seems a little pointless I'm not mad about it for a few reasons.  First, even if every motherfucker did have a Gamecube that doesn't mean they kept it so those who are lamenting their stupid decision finally have a chance to give REMake another go, the game IS 13 years old to be fair.   The second reason I'm not angry is that if ReREMake does well, I hope it sends a message to Capcom about the kind of Resident Evil people want. 

Capcom have had a bad habit for a good while of just taking Resident Evil and making it progressively worse by releasing shitty versions of Resident Evil 4.  I'm hoping that this will send a message not only to Capcom but to other developers is that the kind of survival horror games that real fans of the genre want is shit like this.  None of this Amnesia-esque no combat bullshit, real survival horror games like we had back in the day.

Admittedly I'm going to buy it because my Gamecube and copy are stuck at my family home and I'm halfway across the world so thanks, I guess.  Still though, it does feel a little like a shitty cashgrab by playing on nostalgia but I guess I'll forgive you this time.

The Last of Us: Remastered Vs Persona 4 Golden

Somewhere buried in this blog, there's a post where I had a moan about The Last of Us Remastered.  I moaned because the idea of "remaking" or "remastering" games from the last gen is nothing more than a shitty cash grab to try and make people buy the same game twice. 

So I'm playing Persona 4 Golden on my Vita when I start thinking, what is it about The Last of Us on PS4 that makes me angry while P4G doesn't?  Both are games that aren't all that old except while TLoU feels like a shitty cash grab P4G doesn't.

Before I start, I just want to say I'm not commenting on the quality of The Last of Us as a game, the game is a'ite.  I don't think it's the second coming of Jesus or the best story ever written for a game but it plays well and it's fun.  I've also not played Remastered but I've spent a damn long time googling the version differences before I made this post and with what I found I can safely say, if you bought Remastered (after owning the original), you are a moron.  If you bought it on PS4 because you didn't own it on PS3, fair enough.

Anyway, let's start with what I found regarding TLoU: Remastered.  What I found is that Remastered comes with all the DLC, features a photo mode, some commentary and runs at a higher frame rate.  BIG FUCKIN' WHOOP.  I googled the price on Amazon too and they want fucking £35 goddamn pounds for this shit.  Are the added "features" in this version worth another full price sale?  I don't fucking think so.  The big fucking hubub seems to be that it runs at 60fps on PS4 but is there any reason I couldn't have done that on PS3?  I'm pretty sure Metal Gear Rising runs at 60fps and that shits a lot more hectic than TLoU so what the fuck is going on there? 

I suppose you could argue that with all the DLC thrown in, it's kind of worth it but fuck the DLC.  The single player add on is like 2 hours long and who gives a fuck about the multiplayer?  There are much better games if you want multiplayer shooting. 

So what about Persona 4 Golden?  Why is that so much better?

Well fuck, if I tried to list of the reasons it would take all day because there's A LOT of shit going on with P4G.  While graphically there isn't much going on, there are so many things added to the game itself it'll make your fucking head spin.

There's extra dungeons, extra social links, extra arcanas for your monsters, extra cutscenes, new dialogue, re-worked combat, extra anime scenes for those who like that and this is just a small selection of things.  When I first fired up P4G I was expecting the same thing as the PS2 version but I ended up getting all this extra shit for no extra cost.

Now let's talk cost.  If you happen to live in the UK and you want to play P4G, it only costs about £13 off Amazon.  £13! Hell, you could buy the PS3 version of The Last of Us and get P4G with the money you saved.  Persona 4 isn't fucking around either, this is a meaty game with tons of shit to do that will last you way WAY longer.  Then, if you're a perfectionist, you even get some replay value for your £13 and there's even an insane difficulty mode for the true SMT masters.

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I'm expecting someone to pop up at some point and call me a prick for ragging on TLoU: Remastered but it pisses me off because it's a cashgrab of the most transparent kind.  Go look at the wikipedia page and it says that development on Remastered began straight after they finish the original game so obviously Naughty Dog think their customers are fucking idiots and judging from sales figures, a lot are.  Like I said, if you bought it because you didn't own the original and thought you'd get the "better" version, then fair enough I guess but remaking a game from one generation ago is fucking disgusting and it shows me how little respect some of this AAA game devs and publishers have for their customers.

Finally, before anyone calls me a hypocrite for buying P4G, all my PS2 games were stolen and I lost my original PS2 copy.  But even if that wasn't the case, P4G is still worth buying because it has tons of extra shit for a super low price. 

Beating a Dead Horse

Semi recently, the new Thief game came out on basically every system ever and PC.  I've been hearing quite mixed things about the new Thief since it's launch.  Generally speaking, all the gaming "news" sites have been giving it a good writeup, while every single old school Thief fan I've spoken to on the subject says it's a little bit shit.

Now, I've not played Thief yet, so this post is not commenting on the quality of that game but this is the most recent example of what I'm about to talk about so don't freak out if you really like the game, I'm not slagging it off (yet)

Now just in case you weren't aware, Thief (the original) was an old as fuck first person PC game released in 1998 created by Looking Glass Studio.  2 Years later it got a sequel that was quite well received and then another one popped up in 2004 which I didn't play but it I've not heard many complaints about it so it can't be that bad.

Then 2014 rolls along, it's been 10 years since the last Thief game and then BAM! New Thief game for everyone to enjoy.  Except it's not everyone who's enjoying it, is it? 

No, for all the old school Thief fans, by the sounds of things, they've been left in the dust and the game has been severely dumbed down in order to appeal to a mass market and now there is a group of players who are upset that a series they held so fondly has been fucked in the ass.

Except I haven't played Thief, so let me take another example that is more relevant to my experiences.

Silent Hill: Book of Memories is a little bit of a different category since it's not so much a reboot or a remake but rather just an absolute beating of an already very dead and very rotten horse.

For in uninformed, Silent Hill's 1-3 and to a lesser extent 4 are some of the best horror games ever made ever.  Once the original team stopped making the games and the series was over, a bunch of western teams jumped in to try and carry things on and squeeze every last dollar out of the series they possibly could. 

Book of Memories was the most stand out offensive game that ever came out though and can you guess why?  It's because it wasn't survival horror! It was a fucking Diablo style dungeon crawl and a terrible one at that.

There is absolutely ZERO reason why that game had to be called Silent Hill.  In fact, it probably would have worked in its favour to not have been called Silent Hill because even though it's not very good, people would have been a lot kinder to it if it wasn't going around spitting on everything that came before it.

It's the same with Thief, why did it have to be called Thief?!  Once you throw that name on it, all the fans of the old games are going to come into it comparing it to the originals, and then when it doesn't match up (and it never does) you end up just feeling disappointed and betrayed.

If you just called the game "Sneaky Twats Stealing Adventure" and put "Inspired by Thief" on the box, then people wouldn't be so harsh on it.  But no, all the greedy fucks that populate the games industry nowadays just want to push whatever shitty games they can by banking on brand recognition.

Basically what I'm trying to say with this post is stop "remaking" or "rebooting" things and try to use some of that actual creativity that I know is kicking around in that cesspit of an industry somewhere.  Use the old classics as inspiration for your project, but there is ZERO reason to shit all over the legacy of long standing classics just so you can make a quick buck.

Castlevania Series Run: Dracula X Chronicles

Well it's been a while but I finally did it! I finally got round to beating Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for PSP.  This is going to be another gushy post about this game because it's fucking AWESOME

So for those that don't know, I'm going to explain what this game actually is.  If you remember a while ago, I made a ranty post about how much of a colossal shitfest Dracula X on SNES was.  Well this game was the original game that they butchered, but with a graphical face lift and a ton of other extras. 

So the game itself is basically everything we've experienced with previous Casltevania games, but refined and perfected in order to produce a platforming masterpiece.  The level design for this game is top notch and the bosses at the end of each stage are original and fun to fight against.  The branching paths make a return from Castlevania 3 but this time round they actually have a big impact on the outcome of the game.  Also there is a companion but I'll get into that later.

One complaint about this game is that it's a little bit too easy, but I don't really think that's the fault of the developers dumbing it down or anything.  Whenever I go online and look at forum posts about this game, there is a large number of people talking about how hard this game is.  The reason I probably think it's so easy is that I've been playing so much Castlevania that I've probably just gotten really good.  So to sum up this point, if you're a veteran CV player, you'll breeze through it, and if not, you'll get your ass kicked.  Either way it's still really fun.

But now we have to address something that is quite a glaring problem with this game, and that's your companion.

 That's a picture of Maria from the original PC-Engine version of the game, you can see her redesign on the box at the top of the page.

Anyway, this bitch right here, is too fucking powerful for her own good!  You can get her really easily, really early on and after you get her she will just destroy the fuck out of anything Dracula can possibly throw at you.  Compared to the main character, Richter, her attack is faster, she has a double jump and her item crushes are so overpowered it makes my face melt.

Now this isn't a bad thing, it doesn't ruin the game, but I have some problems with her from a storyline point of view here.  Richter is supposed this seasoned vampire hunter, with a legendary whip made for killing Dracula.  He's supposed to be a bad ass, but in the context of the game, his combat power is dwarfed by a small girl who shoots doves.  I'm aware that Maria is also supposed to be a vampire hunter too but c'mon, talk about stealing the spotlight here. 

Once you get her there is basically no reason to use Richter AT ALL unless you're doing the secrets.  Her attack is faster and you get no sacrifice in power, her double jump is extremely useful and shes a hell of a lot more nimble than Richter is.  The only disadvantage to using Maria is that every time she attacks, she makes this annoying "EY!" sound.  I think she might also have less health, but shes so fucking fast you'll never get hit anyway.

Well I'm not going to talk about Rondo of Blood itself, because it's not really all that different from any other Casltevania game prior, but what I am going to talk about, is the insane replay value in the PSP version.  There is SO MUCH SHIT here that even if you paid full price for it, it's worth every goddamn penny.

So lets go through all the big shit that you get with this game.  You get the Rondo of Blood remake, then you get the original PC Engine version of Rondo of Blood.  On top of that you get a full version of fucking Symphony of the Night! I mean holy shit that's another HUGE game just packaged in with an already meaty Castlevania game.  Finally you get some piece of shit parody game called Akumajou Dracula: Peke, but that takes about 30 seconds to play.

On top of getting an extra 3 games on top of the game you originally paid for, the remake itself contains a shitton of extra music CD's to collect that all count to a completion %age.  So if you're like me and you can't put a game down without getting the 100%, then you'll love finding all these discs.  Plus the music is awesome so they're worth getting anyway and you do need to use Richter for a couple of them, so just roflstomping your way through everything with Maria is not an option.  Finally there is a hidden ending after you fulfil a few requirements, so once you've beaten the game, you have a reason to go back.

To cut a very long story short, this game is fantastic and is easily one of the best games for the PSP.  So go pick it up and give it a whirl, you won't be disappointed at all.  If you don't have a PSP, then go emulate Rondo of Blood or some shit, because if you've not played it you're missing out.

I'll end this post with a picture of my 100% game just because I'm a dick and I like to show off