I liked the Vita more than the 3DS

 

I feel like today there's not a lot going on in the realms of portable gaming.  Sure, the Switch has a "portable" mode and the Steam Deck exists but both of these systems are wide and unwieldly, not the kind of thing I can just yank out of a pocket on a work commute and play for a short time.  But not that long ago we had the dual choice of either a Nintendo 3DS or the Playstation Vita and while most people preferred the 3DS or never touched a Vita, I was one of these mutants that opted for the Vita significantly more than my 3DS.

Now for the record, I own both systems and I like both of them.  What I am NOT saying with this post is that the 3DS is a shitty system.  I know in most gaming spaces the idea of liking 2 "opposing" things is an impossibility but I don't roll like that.  The 3DS had Shin Megami Tensei 4 and Persona Q for fucks sake, I'm not just going to write it off.  That said though, the Vita feels like a system that was almost made entirely for me and my weird tastes as well as my unusual situation at the time that I got it and therefore got significantly more play time.

The first reason for the preference, the big one, was that the Vita was region free.  I bought my 3DS from a friend while at University in England and with it I got a handful of games which was very cool.  However shortly after making this purchase I moved to Japan where I was basically locked out of buying more software for the thing.  I WANTED to give Nintendo my money for new games and they said "what's that? you're an British expat in Japan? well why don't you go fuck yourself, eh?" and thus no new games were ever bought.  Well almost no new games, I bought a copy of Persona Q and by "I bought" I mean I had my mother buy for me and send to me here in Japan which was unfair to her, making her go to game stores looking for weebshit and was a pain in the ass for me in wait times, potential package theft and subsequent repaying of game price.  I didn't even play Shin Megami Tensei 4 on my own 3DS, I borrowed a friends American 3DS with a copy of the game downloaded to it off the e-shop.  I couldn't use the e-shop because the British e-shop wouldn't accept my Japanese credit card and I didn't own a British one so even the digital path was blocked off to me.  And I know there's some fucking gimp reading this post going "jUsT hAcK iT" to which I say that you can go fuck yourself.  I can't be bothered with that and its not something I should HAVE to do just to play new games.

The Vita on the other hand was more than willing to accomodate my multi-region needs at the time.  Bought for my by my wife in Japan, then taken to Sweden, England and America for various reasons and I bought games in all of these countries and just popped them in and had a grand old time.  Not to mention that my PS+ subscription was giving me 2 Vita games a month for free as well as 2 PS4 so I had quite the collection of games and I didn't even have to spend all that much to get it.

Speaking of the games, that's the other reason I like the Vita so much.  I don't care all that much about the 3DS library.  Bravely Default was pretty good and SMT4 and 4A were fun but I can't recall much that really stands out in my mind.  Even flagship titles like A Link Between Worlds, while not shitty, were unmemorable and not the kind of games I'm ever going to rush back and play.  Hell, as I wrote this post I went to go dig out my little box of 30 or so 3DS carts just to make sure there wasn't something amazing that had slipped my mind but all I got was disappointment.  I had middling amounts of fun with the 3DS when playing it, but nothing that stuck out.

The Vita on the other hand seemed to be made EXACTLY for me.  I bought it with a copy of Project Diva F and anyone who watches my streams knows how much of a sucker I am for my weird vocaloid rhythm games.  At the time, the Vita was also the only way to play Persona 4 Golden so that got a great many hours put into it too.  But most of all, the Vita seems to have a large supply of what I like to call "Windows Screensaver Games".  They are usually known as "first person dungeon crawlers" but "dungeon crawler" has been co-opted by idiots who put things like Diablo and Baldurs Gate in the category as well so I like my name better.  Dungeon Travelers, Wizardry, Zanki Zero, Mary Skelter, Labyrinth of Galleria are just a few of the more obvious ones but my Vita's memory card is full to BURSTING with these fucking things.  Tons of obscure Japan only dungeon crawls for me to satiate my weird niche interest that I can just slide into my jacket pocket and play anywhere I want?  Actual gaming heaven.  Hell, about a week before writing this post I JUST bought Meikyuu Cross Blood off Amazon for the Vita, its fucking 2024 and I'm still discovering new dungeon crawls to enjoy for the bloody thing.  So between the rhythm games and the catering to a niche genre that only I and a few others care for, the Vita got the majority of my love and attention.

Not that it was a perfect system.  The 3DS certainly had better portibility, the Vita's design is sort of similar to the Switch and Steam Deck but JUST small enough to not be a pain in the cock, but only just.  Also the 3DS let you slam any old SD card into it for memory but the Vita had these absurdly expensive Sony memory cards the largers versions of which were as much as 2 or 3 games in terms of price.  Sony can really lick my balls on that one, worst part of its design by a lot.  Also the Vita has this stupid back touch screen which I don't think I've ever used once personally and I only know 1 game off the top of my head that uses it at all.

I can fully understand why the 3DS greatly outlasted the Vita and why it enjoyed significantly more popularity from general audiences.  However, the Vita, for me, seemed so attuned to my weird tastes for grid based weebshit that there's no way Nintendo ever stood a chance in my household.

God bless you, PS Vita, I don't think there will ever be a system with a library quite like yours ever again.

Subscription ROM Services are Dumb

 

Yesterday I caught some news that Sony is joining Nintendo in giant game companies providing ROMS via a subscription service and it's pretty darn stupid to say the least.

On the surface it sounds like it could be a good idea.  The idea is that you pay a every month to get access to a collection of back-catalogue games from the companies previous systems to play as much as you want, good deal right?  Well no.  The initial problem with all this stuff is that you're only getting a very small amount of the back catalogue and usually only the best sellers.  This means that any hidden gems or good games that were less popular just get ignored and fall to the wayside which means that despite these services if there's an obscure game you really love you'll probably never get to play it on your modern hardware no matter how much of your hard earned money you give them.  If Shadow Hearts, for example ever turns up on PSN premium I will literally eat an entire shoe store

Money is the other problem because these companies are essentially ripping you off at every turn.  Nintendo released the expansion to Switch Online where you have to pay fifty bucks a month for a smattering of N64 games.  What's worse is that a lot of these games aren't very well presented with the Switch version of Ocarina of Time being somewhat famous for how shit it was compared to regular emulation on PC.  I've heard it has since become a bit better but the fact it was released in the condition that it was in for that price point AT ALL is really stupid.  Sony are even worse wanting $120 per year just for the ability to play some of the PS1/2/3s best sellers which is INSANE to me.  Maybe if it was a one time payment of 120 to play all those games forever, sort of like a giant greatest hits collection, then I wouldn't be moaning but these payments have to be constant.  If you stop playing for Switch online, no more SNES for you.  Stop paying for PSN Premium? Kiss your games goodbye until you cough up more cash.

All of this, when emulation exists which can be done for free and usually at a higher quality than anything Sony or Nintendo will give you.  Now I'm not going to argue the legality of emulation.  If you download some SNES ROMS or some PS2 ISOs and Nintendo or Sony come after you, they are well within their legal rights to do so but just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.  

Let's think about Emulation for a second, who is it hurting?  For this example let's take someone downloading an ISO of Shadow Hearts on the PS2.  You could argue that they should be paying money to play it to support Sony or the developer, Sacnoth.  Well that argument doesn't stand because 1) Sacnoth ain't around no more, 2) The game isn't being sold anywhere no more and 3) The game isn't avaliable on the back catalogue subscription service.  "So go and buy a disc copy instead of pirating then!" I hear you cry through a wave of drool.  

Shadow Hearts on disc is about $130-300 depending on where you buy it.  Now let's say you go this route, where does that money go?  Does it go to Sony to support their production of future games?  No it doesn't.  Does it go to Sacnoth or their parent company Aruze to maybe fund another Shadow Hearts game?  No it doesn't.  So where does the money go then?  It goes to some fat, middle aged neckbeard who hasn't showered in 2 weeks so he can go scoop up more retro games from garage sales and used book stores to over price in online marketplaces.  I know it feels "morally correct" to buy a disc version of a retro game but you're supporting an absolutely disgusting marketplace that's really bad for players.

So tell these subscriptions to go fuck themselves and go fire yourself up and emulator.  I'm sure the multi-billion dollar corporations won't go under because you decided to fire up Yakiniku Bugyou on ePSXe, you don't need to worry your damaged little brain about it

Martha is Dead Censorship

A few days ago I came across a news story about some horror game I hadn't heard of until that point called Martha is Dead that was apparently being censored on Playstation and left alone on PC and X Box.  I then made an offhand tweet about some silliness I saw in the discourse surrounding the game only to find it getting flooded with likes, retweets and a couple of absolutely brainrotten comments from people who cannot read.  So I thought I'd take a little bit of time to say a few things on the issue here.

First of all the censorship itself seems stupid but at this point it's something I have come to expect from Sony.  The clip that is circling around social media is a scene of the game where the player is holding a severed head of some woman and the player character proceeds to use a razor to make cuts in the side of the head and then pull off the face (complete with button prompts!) and then they wear it or something. Sure, the scene in question is sort of shocking but it's no worse than anything else that comes out of other titles in the genre and even out of the genre of horror.  Severing limbs and DIY eye surgery in Dead Space, Lara Croft getting brutalized in the reboot games, Fatality animations in Mortal Kombat, no one seems to give a shit when this kind of thing is going on from huge studios but a small indie group make a face-ripping scene and suddenly its all "ooooh this is absolutely disgusting how could anyone possibly make this?!"

At least for me in Japan, Sony censoring violence is nothing new.  I have talked at length both on the blog and on stream about how parts of Until Dawn were censored so heavily that if affected the story.  Resident Evil is also very heavily censored when it comes to violence even in it's more expensive "Z-Versions".  The story I have heard (Im not sure how true this is, keep in mind) is that in 1997 is that some 14 year old kid abducted and beheaded a couple of Elementary school children and left their severed heads on the school gate for people to see.  The kid was caught and after all was said and done a politician called Shizuka Kamei put the blame squarely on "violent and cruel movies" and so acts of extreme violence in mutilation in films and games have been censored or not really done since then.  

So while the censorship is stupid and shouldn't be done, it at least makes some degree of sense that one of the biggest companies in the entire country wouldn't want to get on the bad side of those rules.  Nintendo, as far as I know, doesn't really have any games in their library that would require that kind of censorship and Microsoft is an American company that doesn't need to give a shit, which is why you probably don't see this kind of thing happening on those platforms.  

But I'll be honest, I stopped giving a shit about Sony censorship a long time ago, thems just the breaks, what my tweet was actually about was the individual user response about the content itself.  Most people responded with outrage at the censorship and that it should be left alone and if that kind of extreme violence in a piece of media makes you uncomfortable to the point of "literally shaking and crying" then just don't play it, something I agree with quite strongly.  What people need to realize is that while "video games are for everyone" is a nice fluffy statement that lets you pretend to be a good person on social media, the truth is that while games are for everyone, not ALL games are for everyone.  If you don't like violent, grotesque acts in your games, don't play horror.  If you don't like difficult gameplay, don't play Dark Souls or Cuphead.  I don't like endless boring life-sim bullshit like Animal Crossing but instead of moaning about it I can very easily accept its just not for me and then not buy it, it's really that easy.

Where I get my back up is when I was scrolling through the tweets and I saw someone describe the developers as "irresponsible" for "releasing the games without trigger warnings".  What this is doing is attempting to villify the creators of Martha is Dead for hiding the nature of the content in the game and acting as if the violence and adult themes are some kind of surprise.  Except that's not true is it?  The game is rated M and has all the relevent warnings and even if it didn't have that, the literal FIRST THING you see when going to the Steam page is this.

It's RIGHT THERE, before you can ever access the game description or the button to buy, you have to accept this warning.  Do not try and pass off your inability to read or lack of attention span on the developers as if it's their fault.  Just because it's not written with the words "TRIGGER WARNING" at the top of the page and is written as a paragraph full of vapid social media buzzwords doesn't mean it's not there.  

Anyway, I had no idea what the game was before this controversy and now I'm excited to pick it up for myself, possibly to play in some kind of October Horror Playlist on stream later this year.  So while the censorship is bad and the controversy stupid, at least I found an interesting game out of it.

2020 Console Wars

 Console wars were a thing back in the day that users and companies used to partake in to try and push sales of their own systems. Sega did what Nintendidn't, Atari were doing the math and people would froth at the mouth about the number of "bits" a system had despite that fact that no one knew what a "bit" actually was.  It was a bit of fun back then to argue with your friends on the playground between Mario or Sonic being better and it was sort of funny to see companies do a bit of shit-slinging in their adverts but in the modern day of the PS5 and the Xbox Series X it all feels a little pointless.

Back then systems felt quite different to play and their libraries were pretty drastically different too.  The type of games and the way those games felt to play felt worlds apart back when were were arguing over the SNES and the Megadrive or the Saturn and the PS1.  The Xbox and the PS5 are far too similar for anyone to really give a shit anymore and from both of those systems most games are getting PC releases too so owning one or the other is irrelevant in the face of a user with a beefy rig.

But whenever Sony or Microsoft put out a tweet about their new systems, there go all the twats in the replies arguing about CPU speed or graphical capabilities like anyone REALLY gives a shit.  Just get the thing your friends are getting so that you can all play together and if you have no friends just get the thing that has a game on it that you like the look of.  If you're into Souls, get a PS5, if you're into Halo, get an Xbox, you really don't have to think that deeply about it.

Luckily for me, I've always managed to avoid this tiresome console warring dogshit since I've always managed to maintain a social circle where all my bases have been covered.  When I was very young I was lucky enough to have both a SNES and a Megadrive, a bit further on I had a Saturn and my buddy had a PS1 (which I later bought off him) and then I had a DC, that same guy had a Xbox and another buddy had a PS2.  We weren't so much arguing over who had the better thing but rather just enjoying each others libraries when we hung out, it was cool.  After that point I was old enough where it stopped mattering since I'd buy my own shit anyway.

So quit yelling over poly-counts and FPS values, you're games aren't distinct enough any more for anyone to care.  Just buy a PC because everything will come out for that anyway at this point.

Struggling To Care About The PS5 (for now)

 

The new collaborative console effort between Netgear and Sony is around the corner and my social media has recently exploded with people pre-ordering the new PS5 system.  Also before I get into the meat of this post, let me take a quick moment to give a big "fuck you" to all the scalpers I've seen, trying to make a ton of pre orders and then putting those on e-bay for $1000+.  You're a bunch of scumbags and if it was up to me you'd spend the rest of your life having to walk around with shoes filled with Lego.

So of course, excited to see what the new system has to offer I start doing some research and....oh dear, how boring the entire thing seems to be.  I did a quick google search for "PS5 launch games" to see what I'd be able to play and there is essentially NOTHING on the list of launch games that piques my interesting even a little bit.  Assassins' Creed, Rainbow Six, Call of Duty, some Little Big Planet thing, Spiderman, I'm sure all these games appeal to somebody but they sure as fuck do not appeal to me.

The only thing that looks sort of interesting is the Demons' Soul remaster and while it does look very shiny I'm not about to drop $600 on an entirely new system plus another $70 for the game just so I can play something that I've already played to absolute death.  I still have my copy of Demons' Souls, I still have my PS3, if I wanna play it, I'll just play that and save my money.

But you may have noticed in the title the little "(for now)" and that's because I know for an absolute fact that I'm going to end up buying one maybe about a year or so from it's launch date.  This is just the reaction I have to most systems upon launch.  It's how I felt about the PS3, it's how I felt about the PS4, it's how I felt about the Switch and now all of those systems and currently in my possession and get A LOT of use.  It's a shame the launch lineup is so lack luster, but I'm sure there will be some waifu filled RPG or some new FromSoftware game that will make me use an entire paycheck picking it up the day those titles launch.

I'm excited to see what it will offer us in the future, but for now I'm happy to kick back and attempt to catch up with my backlog

Missing E3 Hype

E3, the biggest gaming event of the year basically, is around the corner and unfortunately I don't give a flying fuck about it, at all.  I'm not making this post to be all controversial and hate on the show but I'm here to lament how what once was a truly exciting time for me has been reduced to nothing more than a slight blip on my radar.

I remember back in high school I had a group of friends that I'd play games like Counterstrike with.  When E3 rolled around we'd all jump on a Ventrilo server and watch the live coverage and discuss the games that were announced.   I also remember in my second year of university, a friend coming down to my apartment and we stocked up on large amounts of pizza and soda and then watched the event while we played other games, tons of fun.  Even a few years ago, when I had a short stint of living in Sweden, I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to watch the conferences live and then spending the best part of the next day talking about the event with friends.  

Even before all this live streaming stuff was popular, back when I was just a wee child, I remember seeing footage on TV from E3 and getting incredibly exciting about the idea of something like that even existing.  I'm sure I gave my parents an earful about how badly I wanted to go to LA to see the show for myself but unfortunately it never came to pass.  

E3 now however is a sad shell of what it once was.  Nintendo have pulled out of the show and this year Sony did the same.  That alone is enough for me to stop caring because I live in Japan and no one gives a fuck about Xbox over here so I have no interest on need to watch a conference from Microsoft.  Sony and Nintendo are doing their own thing at the same time as the show.  I'll just go and watch their shit directly rather than waking up early to catch some bullshit talk from EA or Bethesda.  The last few years have also seen the event marred by various controversy over things like gender, race or identity politics.  I'm trying DESPERATELY hard to avoid any of that bullshit but if the last few years are anything to go by, it means that following the news closely will guarantee that I walk face first into a wall of clickbait bullshit.  If we get through the entire event and there isn't some claim that "X game is racist" or "Y company is sexist" or something like that, I'll eat a shoe

That's not to say I'll be ignoring it completely, once the show is over, the Nintendo Direct done and the Sony thing aired, I'll be sure to at the very least look at a list of games and follow up on things that interest me.  Personally I'm hoping to see some Shin Megami Tensei 5 news during this whole period but to be brutally honest I probably have a better chance of finding a chicken that lays golden eggs.

Silent Hill Book of Memories is THE WORST Game Ever Made

I'm so happy I didn't pay for this game.  I'm "happy" that it was given to me for free via my PS+ subscription on my Vita before Sony stopped making that a thing.  For a long time I thought that Silent Hill: Homecoming was the worst Silent Hill but this thing really steals this shit show like nothin' else.  But not only is it easily the worst Silent Hill game it is quite possibly the worst video game ever made BAR NONE.  Worse than Hydlide, worse than Action 52, worse than any game you could possibly ever mention.

The story, what little of it I've bothered to pay attention to, is about a guy who gets a book of memories.  The book is sort of like a Death Note but it comes pre written with everything that's happened to you up to that point.  You are then free to change the contents and the book will bend reality to fit whatever it is you wrote in it.  It's actually, in a non-Silent Hill setting, not a bad idea for a plot but that combined with the fact it's told almost entirely through poorly written notes and poorly voiced audio clips makes it completely uninteresting.

Game play wise Book of Memories is a hack and slash game with random dungeons.  Think Diablo but instead of having a huge budget it was made by a team that seem to have been paid about 32p and given a single tube of Pringles to share.  You start by making an incredibly generic looking character and picking a "gift", which ends up doing fucking nothing and then hacking your way through a bunch of dungeons until you reach a boss.  Rinse and repeat until you finish all the worlds.

The combat is clunky, unsatisfying and lacks any challenge whatsoever.  Part of the lack of challenge comes from the fact that your stats and gear don't actually mean ANYTHING.  The only stat that matters is strength and MAYBE if you want to make the game even easier on yourself, throw a few points into vitality.  Strength does the obvious thing of making you hit harder and Vit makes your first aid kits heal for more and makes your character harder to hit.  Couple this with the enemy AI being dumber than a pile of rocks and you've got one really tedious game.  Assuming that you have working fingers and you're more than 6 months old, the only enemies you MIGHT die to are the Bogeymen (From Downpour) because he's got a heal, and an AOE ground pound that takes 70% of your life and the Insane Cancer's (3) that explode when they die and if they hit it does about 90% damage.

The absolute worst part of this game though is the sound design.  There's no point during play you won't be either extremely annoyed or cringing so hard that your body turns inside out.  Go and look up an old game called Dark Castle, either play it yourself or watch the AVGN episode of it or something, but Homecoming sounds almost EXACTLY like that.

This is hands down, the worst game ever made.  The development team behind it should be ashamed.  I don't know diddly jack shit about video game development outside of making text adventures with Python and I could probably shit out a better game in a week doing everything by myself.  The worst part is that it tries to worm itself into the series by changing the character motivations from the first few games but thinking about it just makes me too mad but there's plenty of YouTube content out there that explains that side of it.

If you ever see it on sale, run, run and never look back

The PS Vita is Dead, Long Live the PS Vita

Well it's over, the dream is dead, everybody go home.  Sony have announced that as of about two days ago, the PS Vita is to be discontinued.  A sad day for gaming indeed.

The PS Vita had a hard life, it was sort of hard to justify buying one if you lived outside of Japan.  I remember seeing it when it was new and thinking that it looked cool.  I went to the store to pick one up, looked at the selection of games that were available and just INSTANTLY put it back down.  I didn't really give a fuck about that Uncharted game that was released for it and the selection of titles for the system around launch time were extremely lacking.  Eventually I moved to Japan where the selection of games was much better and even better, my wife gifted me one for my birthday.  But the Vita had another curse which was it's memory cards.  You couldn't just use a normal micro SD card or anything like that, you had to buy a special PS Vita memory card and those bastards were NOT cheap.  I got the smallest one and still had to shell out $60 or so for it.  That's a pretty high barrier to entry.

Eventually the library of games got better and I built up a pretty enjoyable library of titles, most of which are Japanese exclusive unfortunately for the Western audience but the memory cards never got any cheaper and it could just never build the same kind of hype that it's competitor, the 3DS, was creating.

If you could read Japanese then the amount of surprisingly good JRPGs and dungeon crawling titles was kind of staggering.  Due to this, the Hatsune Miku Project Diva games and the fact that it's region free, my Vita has seen WAY more use than my 3DS.  I've not played my 3DS since Bravely Default came out but I'm still using my Vita about once a week.

So let's take a moment for our fallen hero, the Vita, the little console that good.  Hopefully some kind of effort will be made to emulate it so that a bunch of fan translations can be released and people can enjoy the great library of games that never made it across the pond.

The Playstation Classic Isn't THAT Bad

I never thought I'd do a post advocating in favor (sort of) of an overpriced emulator in a box but here I am.  Before I start, in case you don't know, Sony have followed Nintendo's lead of releasing mini classic systems with their own Playstation Classic.  The list of 20 games that are preloaded onto the system were announced and people are NOT happy about it.


There are some really well known titles in the lineup such as Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7 and Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey but then there's some slightly less popular/well known games such as Jumping Flash, Intelligence Qube and Mr Driller.  There's no real game on there that's really bad, despite some people telling me that Rainbow Six is dicks but I remember having fun with it (not played in a long time, mind you), so why are people so mad?

From what I can tell it seems to be that people are pissed because games like Puzzle Fighter 2 got put on the system over things like Spyro, Crash, Silent Hill or one of the other many great games in the PS1 library.  These are the 3 big titles I see popping up in every little comment but I don't understand how you can be mad about those because Crash has been remade for PS4, Spyro is about to be remade for PS4 and Silent Hill is owned by a company so inept that they nearly got sued over voice rights for their own remake of 2 and 3 so lord only knows what kind of licensing issue lies in that one.

My problem with people complaining about it in general though is that people only seem to want obvious shit on their classic systems.  For example, the SNES classic is a cool piece of kit but I'll never buy one because it only contains games that I've already played to death.  Obvious picks to keep the fanboys happy, so that people can go on social media and post stupid shit like "erh mah gerd do you remember Mario?!"  At least Sony had the balls to put on some lesser known titles like fucking Jumping Flash or Intelligence Qube, so that maybe once you've had your little nostalgia rush you can explore a few gems of the system that you may have not heard of.

I would have considered buying a SNES classic, for example, if Nintendo had made let's say, only 10 of the games safe bets like Earthbound, Metroid, Zelda, Mario and the rest as things like Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma and Ogre Battle.  Syphon Filter, Wild Arms and Super Puzzle Fighter are good games, why are you so afraid to broaden your horizons a bit?  The only "shit" game on that entire list is Revelations: Persona and that's only because the localization was a complete botch job, not that the game itself is shit.  Maybe its an updated version and then what I said about it being crap isn't even true. 

If you're THAT pissed off about it just go and emulate stuff.  The emulators for PS1 are actually pretty good so just make your own PS1 "Classic" and play the games you like.  Also the list of games in Japan is much different and contains things like Parasite Eve and G Darius.  The lineup here is so good I might even pick one up once the price tag goes down a little bit. 

Play something new, it won't kill you, you might even like that Wild Arms thing.

Sony Slim Woes

I'm not the kind of person who treats my shit badly.  I try to store everything the best I can and my systems will, at worst, get a little dusty.  However for a few years now I've been having constant problems with the slimmed down version of Sony products.  I own a slim PS3, a Vita 2000 model and a slim PS2, so lets work our way through that.

PS3 Slim

To be fair, this one has behaved pretty well.  I bought it in 2011 or so, used, and it's been pretty much perfect.  I've carried it half way across the world from Japan to Sweden and then back to Japan again and it works just fine.  Despite being the "slim" version it's still sort of big and bulky so I guess that's why I'm not having any trouble with it.  I did have an issue where the controller would just randomly start pushing buttons on its own but this just kind of went away on its own.  I have no idea what caused it and no idea what fixed it but I'm just happy I can play my games.  That's more of a controller issue than a system issue anyway.

PS2 Slim

I bought this guy a few years ago when I came back to Japan long term.  Generally speaking it works pretty well but there was one issue about a year ago that pissed me off pretty hard.  My wife fired up the thing to play Kamaitachi no Yoru 2 with her friends where the system just wouldn't make the disc spin.  The fucking thing wasn't recognizing that the drive door was closed so the disc wouldn't spin and therefore you couldn't play the fucking game.  I realized that inside the system there's a little switch that gets pushed down when the door is shut and for some reason this wasn't being pushed.  I put some tape on it which remedied the problem but I had the original PS2 from pretty close to launch and used it all the way up to the end of university with no problems, this thing is just built like shit.

Then there's the issue of the controller which for some reason will just start going right and won't stop until I smack it.  I have a new controller that seems to work well now though and once again that's more of a controller issue than a system issue and could be because I bought it used.

PSP 2000

Now this fucking thing has been a problem since I bought it years and years ago.  I probably should have traded it for a less defective fucking thing but I was too lazy and now I'm paying the price. 

The first issue I had with this thing was dead pixels in the screen.  A red one and a greenish looking one  which should have set off alarm bells in my head but they are in such unimportant parts of the screen that I didn't think anything of them.  While annoying in any part of the game that goes bright white, generally speaking they aren't noticeable but it's frustrating that they are there.

The second issue is a bit more serious.  During game play I will randomly get the grey "Do you want to quit the game" message despite the fact I've not touched the home button.  The button itself isn't sticky and I think it has something to do with a little switch behind the UMD door but I have no idea what the fuck is going on really.

Then a few days ago I went about 10 minutes down the road to a place with my wife, took the thing in my pocket.  I didn't fall down, run or jump on anything and yet when I arrived at the place and took it out for a spin, there were some strange transparent lines going down the left hand side of the screen.  Play it for too long and I get graphical distortion and more lines and a quick google search seems to indicate that the fucking thing is dying.

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So if I've learned anything from this experience it's that slim type Sony products are a bunch of shit with the exception of maybe the PS3.  I know that when I go and buy a new PSP in a couple of days I'm going right back to the PSP 1000 with its metal frame and bulky ass case.  Reliability over portability from now on.

PS+: Best 5000 Yen Ever

Back in December my wife gifted me a PS4 for my birthday and since then I've been a member of Playstation plus.  Aside from Tekken 6, I never played my PS3 online too much and Xbox Gold pissed me off by being a pay to play service for online games but I decided to jump back into these kind of online services for consoles and see whats up and now I'm pleasantly surprised.

The draw of the PS3 over the 360 back when those consoles were all the rage was that you didn't need to pay for the PS3s online service to play your games online.  Xbox on the other hand required that you had Xbox Live Gold which where you would pay monthly to get shouted at down a microphone by 12 year old children who think they are really cool playing Call of Duty and Gears of War. You'd still have the 12 year olds on PSN but at least you didn't have to pay for that shitty experience.

Of course, times have changed and now, as far as I understand, you are required to be paying for PS+ in order to play your games online.  It's not that expensive, I dropped just over 5000 yen for a year long subscription which is equivalent to about £30.  Now I don't really have any games that are required to be played online but I'm still really happy with my decision because PS+ just goes and throws 2 free games at you every month.

Now I caught wind of the free games that were available on the UK PS+ service and I get the feeling that if I was living in England this post would have a very different tone.  This month the UK PS+ users got Zombi and some space thing I've never heard of while I got Earth Wars, a cool side scrolling hack and slash with slightly dodgy character animation and Skulls of The Shogun, a cool little indie TBS that's both challenging and charming.

Generally speaking, the free games spat out by PS+ have been pretty good.  Most notably I've had Metal Slug 3, Steins Gate and Toukiden Kiwami just thrown at me for no money.  The total value of all the games I've downloaded easily exceeds 20,000 yen  and it's only April.  By the time I have to renew my shit PS+ would have paid for itself purely in free shit. 

Paying to play online feels like bullshit when I can do it for no real extra cost on my PC but at least with Playstation I'm being showered with free shit.  Granted they put some crap games on there too but generally speaking I'm happier with the PS+ service than any other online gaming service that I've paid for in the past.

PS4 First Impressions

So content for the blog has been a little thin on the ground due to the fact that my wife bought me a PS4 for my birthday!  Now that I'm finally up to speed with next gen I thought I'd write a short bit on what I think about the system itself.

First the size of the thing, it's pretty fucking large and that is a little bit of a pain in the ass.  If I lived back in my family home in Sweden or my old house in the UK then this wouldn't be an issue at all but as it happens I live in a small-ish Japanese apartment so finding space to put this damn thing down was actually a little bit of an issue.  That said it is a nice shape that slots nicely into the desk space that I put it so it's not all bad, just be aware of the size if you're strapped for space like I am.

Interface wise it's the same as every other Sony gaming product since PSP, that kind of horizontal scrolling menu.  I'm a big fan of this interface, it's slick and easy to use as opposed to the Xbone which just confuses the fuck out of me every time I use it. It might just be because I'm a stupid retard but it's I find it very easy to get lost in the Xbox One interface but with this everything is basically idiot proof, which is exactly what I need.

I do quite like this whole share button feature because sharing stupid screenshots of stuff with my friends is pretty cool.  One thing I'm really interested in is the whole streaming to twitch thing but at time of writing I have not tried this out yet.  I want to buy a Playstation Camera so that I can talk/do the face cam thing I do when I stream from my PC so I'm not quite sure how good the twitch integration is.  That said, I've watched streams of a few friends who are doing it from their PS4 and it seems pretty solid, so I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

The other feature I quite like is the whole PS+ thing.  It costs about 5000 yen for a year, which is essentially free and every month they provide you with free games for you to download.  Originally I didn't see the big deal because I thought that you lost the games when the selection games but it turns out that as long as PS+ is active and you downloaded them, you can play them forever which is rad.  I thought a service like that would cost an arm and a leg, especially in this day and age when every company seems to want to rip you off with DLC and needless extras/exclusive content but like I said before, 5000 yen is nothing and it covers the whole year.

While neither of the next gen libraries grabbed me at first, PS4 has also started to pick up some steam.  Right now I own copies of Bloodborne: The Old Hunters Edition and Yoru no Nai Kuni (yet unplayed) and there are a bunch of other games like MGS5 and a few RPGs I've seen milling around the store.  There's also P5 and Nier 2 on the horizon so with that in mind I'm pretty fucking happy with my purchase.  Already the anime moe games are starting to creep in on store shelves which may turn some people off but it doesn't really bother me, I can sit through kawaii bullshit if the games good.

So yeah, I like the PS4 and I'm hoping that it carries on being this strong all the way through its lifetime, we'll just have to wait and see.  Now I'm gonna get get destroyed at Bloodborne!

Too Much Moe Spoils The System

I like the Vita, a lot of people give it a lot of stick for having no games or for being a bit shitty in the west, which may be true, but it's a solid system with enough good titles to make it worth owning.

Now, I'm not against a bit of fan service in games quite the contrary.  I don't want to play deep cerebral experiences all the damn time, sometimes I just want to fire up a game and shoot stuff, fight people or ogle pretty girls.  These games need to exist because I don't want 100% of gaming to be all emotionally draining shit like Nier or Shadow of the Colossus or have crazy thought provoking narratives like Silent Hill, sometimes a guy just wants to unwind with something easy.

There does come a point though where it starts to feel like too much though.  Whenever I enter a game store in Japan I walk over to the Vita section and the only thing I can see from one side of the shelf to the other is fan service type moe games.  I can't help but feel it's getting to the point where it's too much for the same reason I don't as previously mentioned.  Sometimes I just want to unwind with something easy to understand and stimulating to a very base part of my brain but sometimes I want more than that and well, the Vita is disappointing me on that area.

Not to say that there aren't any deeper experiences to be had on the Vita but they are buried under piles of doe eyed anime girls not wearing much and casting insane magic spells.  I don't spend much time using PSN so I'm hoping that maybe there are some downloadable titles with a bit more depth to them but if you want to get physical like I like to do your collection might make you look a bit strange.

C'mon, I love my Vita but I want to be able to use it outside, as intended, without feeling like I'm being judged by every passer by in the street.  Hopefully my trip to TGS next week will show me some games that I can get really excited for and tell other people about without looking like a lonely otaku.

It's Not Called PSX

This pisses me off way more than it should but goddamnit, every time I see it I get pangs of rage.

The above console, as most of you reading this post probably know, is the Playstation.  It was a system released in Japan in 1994 and kicked off a great line of gaming systems that has stuck with us to this very day. 

There was a redesign for the original Playstation, here's a picture

This was released in 2000 and was called the PSOne.  It sold like hotcakes and even had some funky LCD screen thing that looked pretty cool but I never saw anyone actually using it.

Now, there are people who have plenty of fond memories with the original Playstation hardware and rightly so since it has a plethora of awesome games.  However, there are people who refer to this console in conversation as the "PSX" and this is fucking retarded.  At no point in time were any of these commercially available systems called the "PSX", it's just some stupid shit that people use because they think it sounds cool.

There is a reason that people use it though, it just happens to be a fantastically fucking stupid one.  PSX was the code name given to the system during it's development, according to a quick Google search.  Calling the PS1 the PSX would be like referring the the Gamecube as the Dolphin or the Wii as the Revolution.  People don't do that because it's stupid to do so.  I've heard it argued that there was a Magazine called PSX or something but that doesn't fly either because then you'd be talking about the magazine, not the fucking system.

There does exist a machine, made by Sony, called the PSX though, check it out.

It was released in Japan only in 2003 and was a digital video recorder with a fully integrated PS2 inside.  THAT is a PSX and it's the only thing that's ever officially been called a PSX and therefore, it's the only thing that should be referred to as a PSX.

I know I'm being pedantic about this whole thing but whatever.  The Playstation is NOT called a PSX and I can't help but feel that anyone who calls it that is a bit of an idiot.

Hatsune Miku Project Diva F2nd

These games were basically the whole reason I bought a Vita, they really are THAT good!

For those that don't know, Hatsune Miku is the mascot character for a piece of software known as Vocaloid.  The way I understand it, you type Japanese into the software and then Miku will sing it back to you.  You can then use the software to fuck about with the sounds and make original songs.  People who make songs using this software upload their stuff to a website called Nico Nico Douga and from there Vocaloid and Hatsune Miku have gained massive popularity in Japan.

Project Diva F2nd is the second game in the Miku themed rhythm games and if you've ever played a rhythm game before then you should know what to expect from a title like this.  You pick a song and then press the buttons that appear on the screen in time with the music.  On top of that there is the Diva Room mode where you can creepily rub Miku's (and the other characters) faces to unlock various things.  As you play you get Diva Points to use in the games shop mode where you can buy things like skins for the interface and outfits for the characters.

It's hard to talk about this game at any length because it really is just a straight up rhythm game and the appeal comes from how much you like Vocaloid songs.  If you don't know any Vocaloid songs but you enjoy catchy J-Pop then this game still would be up your alley. 

The game still suffers from the really annoying bullshit where you have to play all the songs on Normal to unlock them on Hard and then again on Hard to unlock them for extreme.  It's annoying because Normal and Hard are a fucking cakewalk.  However after playing a few songs on the extreme setting I've found that this game seems to be considerably harder than any other Miku game that I've played previously.

If you have a Vita and you need a worthwhile addition to your library, then buy this.  It's well made, has catchy music and it's great for short bursts.

The PS2 Adventure

Oh my fucking god, this shouldn't have been this hard to get my hands on a god damn PS2.

A long long LOOONG time ago when this blog was still nice and young, I made a post about how all my shit had been stolen by a mailing company during my move from England to Sweden.  Ever since then, and since moving to Japan, I've been trying to get my hands on a PS2 so I can start putting my collection back together.

However, finding a PS2 in Nagoya was the hardest shit in the universe.

Near my house, there is a place called Book Off.  Book Off is a used manga store but because my branch happens to be slap bang in the middle of a big city, it does basically everything.  Books, games, clothes, you name it, Book Off probably has it.  What they didn't have in stock for some reason was PS2s.  They have plenty of 3s, a few 4s and a bunch of Vita's and PSPs but no PS2s, which was a real pain in the ass because it's usually Book Off that give the best deals.

Now, on the other side of my house there is a street filled with retro stuff.  These retro stores are for collectors and the owners go out of their way to make sure everything is in as close to perfect condition as humanly possible.  The one store that I usually go to was selling PS2 Slims for about 20,000 yen which is equal to about £116!  

For that same goddamn price I can buy a Wii fucking U and THAT'S a current gen system.

But that isn't the only retro store that sells systems on that street, but the other one is run by a total ass clown who ramps up the prices of his shit so high that it's never EVER worth it to buy hardware from this guys store.

He had an absolute crap ton of PS2s but here is what he wanted for them

7000 for the system
1500 for the video cables
1500 for the AC cables
2100 for a controller (x2 because I need to be able to accommodate people)
and 500 for a memory card

That's 12,600 Yen, which is less than the asking price for a slim but considering that this is the price for a big fat old model PS2 it's still a total fucking ripoff.  So when it comes to buying systems these specialist stores can suck my ass.

But then I waltz into Book Off yesterday and they are selling SLIMS for 6000.  That's still a little higher than the prices that I've heard about in some other stores where a few of my friends live, but for Nagoya it's a fucking bargain.

Moral of the story, if you live in Japan and want a PS2, don't come to Nagoya.  Japan may be one of the best places to be for a retro collector (even though PS2 isn't really retro yet) but good lord is it total bullshit sometimes.

Next Gen is Really Grinding My Gears

OK, this is fucking stupid. 

Not too long ago we saw the release of the PS4 and Xbox One, something that should be an exciting time with all these new games and fancy hardware to play it on.  But no, it's not an exciting time, it's a time filled with loud obnoxious noises, sighing and eye rolling.  Let me show you what I mean.

That's a montage of the Xbox One making horrible grinding noises when you put the disc in, and there is a PS4 version as well.  Not to mention that since the release of these systems, a great deal of my twitter feed is "oh, my PS4 broke" or people asking questions like "just how many people have faulty systems?" and then getting a ton of replies.

This is fucking unacceptable!  When I bought my fat PS3 when MGS4 came out, I had absolutely no issues, and until it got stolen there were no problems.  Same with my slim PS3, which is preowned as well, zero problems there.  I had no problems when I was gifted my first Mega Drive, no problems when the N64 came out, nothing for the Dreamcast and then in 2013 suddenly the cutting edge systems have stupid high failure rates.

Microsoft and Sony...why fucking bother?  I don't want to have to worry about my potential purchase of a PS4 or Xbox One maybe failing because YOU can't fucking quality control.  One or two faulty systems is just tough luck, that shit happens, but THIS much faulty hardware being sold to people is a fucking joke and you should be ashamed.

Just go look at twitter for a while or do some searching on YouTube and there are tons of people with videos or tweets about how their shit isn't working as intended or just flat out not working at all.  Hell, the systems are less than a month old and already the term "Blue Light of Death" has been made up for the PS4.

So until this shit gets fixed, fuck next gen.  Right now there aren't any games I even want to play and even if they were I wouldn't want to spend the money because my system probably won't work.  So yeah, get fucked Sony and Microsoft, how about making something that works before taking peoples money?  Bunch of arseholes need to go drown in a lake of dicks.

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.

Why the Sony Used Game Announcement is Sad

Don't freak your shit! I'm not against used games or anything like that, in fact I'm super happy the PS4 is supporting used games, in fact I was happy with pretty much all of those announcements they made at that press conference.

But the reaction to that news struck a nerve with me and while it was good news the crowd reaction to it made me a little upset.

Think about it, used games have been a thing since gaming was a thing, people sharing their collections and enjoying games together or trading in old titles to play the latest ones, it was great.  But it has now gotten to a point where companies have gotten so greedy that they don't want us to do that anymore and they are willing to force any amount of bullshit on us to make us shell out top dollar just to play their games.

The PS4 supporting used games shouldn't have been applauded because it's fucking STANDARD and it's a shame that the industry has got to the point where something as normal as used games has become big news.  You don't see the movie industry desperately trying to stop used DVDs like the games industry tries to stop used games and it's sad.

So good job Sony, not doing this whole used game DRM dogshit, and hopefully the reaction at E3 painted a good picture to the rest of the industry of how that crap will not fly.  Looks like the WiiU, PS4 and PC are the ways to go for this coming generation.

Sony Press Conference Thoughts!

This is the last of the bunch, enjoy!