Free Game Friday: Pandora Saga: Weapons of Balance first impressions (Level 1-10)

So another Friday means another free game for you to piss away those weekend hours on.  This week I bring to you a free MMORPG available on Steam called Pandora Saga: Weapons of Balance.  Due to the fact I've been playing other games and I've been keeping busy with my job and such, I've only had a chance to reach level 10, so I'll give you the story so far.

First, this is a game developed by Atlus Online, the company that also gave us the likes of Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online.  Quite frankly, last time I played SMT: Imagine, it sucked so fucking hard I wanted to rip my own fingernails out.  I'm a huge fan of that series and even I was bored to death grinding through its boring world and uninteresting dungeons.

Luckily for us, Pandora Saga is nothing like SMT: Imagine and the first 10 levels have actually been pretty good so far.  So the story so far is as follows, I started playing on Monday and I created a elf spellcaster.  Now here lies my first issue with the game, not a huge dealbreaker but a issue none the less.

This is what a male elf looks like.  The reason I picked an elf is because they are naturally adept at magic, and being a spellcasting class I thought this would be a good choice.  The only problem is, all the elves look like fucking children and there is no way to de-shit a Pandora Saga elf.  That said there are quite a few playable races (off the top of my head I think it's 5) and the elf is the only really stupid looking one.  For those that have played the game and are reading this anyway, yes, the elf has a shitter design than those silly little dog bastards.

Anyway, so when you fire the game up you don't get bogged down in stupid long winded tutorials, your in town, surrounded by a load of high level players selling shit, and your only direction is to go talk to the city guard guy and get a quest.  The game basically tells you nothing and has you figure most of it's shit out for yourself, which SOUNDS like a bad thing, but it's not so involved that you can't figure it out with a bit of common sense.

So the quests in this game are standard free MMO fare, "go kill X amount of bastard Y for item Z" etc. but what more do you expect from these kind of games really?  For the first 10 levels that's all I've really been doing, but it doesn't feel like a grind because you're never asked to kill huge numbers of monsters and the rewards are big enough to give you a level each time.  However I have run into a few technical issues with monsters clipping into the scenery and when they do that you can't hit them.  It's just been a mild annoyance now but I've got a horrible feeling it's going to fuck me over hard later.

 Also, this picture is a little small and it's kind of hard to see, but that is a level 44 stray wolf just milling around the first quest area.  Sure, this doesn't seem like much of an issue at first but putting an enemy this high level at the start of the game makes me question how big the world is going to end up being.  I can't seem to find a complete world map, but then again I've not looked very hard for one.  Aside from that, the gameplay is smooth and it plays a little bit like Lineage 2 which is a game I used to have a massive MMO boner for but even if you weren't part of the old L2 crowd I still think there is some enjoyment to be had here.

The other thing I want to touch on here is the skill system in this game.

 It's a pretty cool idea where every level you get a certain number of Stat and Skill points.  With the stat points you can really fuck yourself over if you go drooling all over your keyboard and put them into parameters you don't need.  But if you don't have severe brain damage this really isn't a problem.  The real cool thing is the skill points.  Every level you get a skill point to apply to one of your abilities, in my case the various schools of magic.  Once you learn a skill from that area, you can then level up that area further by using those skills.  This means, that even if you go make a load of stupid choices early on with your skill loadout, it can be fixed with enough grind.  It's a cool idea and I can't wait to see how it plays out later on.

There is also a shitton of other systems such as horse mounted combat and a warring nations as well as guilds and PVP etc.  but I've yet to try any of this out so hopefully I'll have more on that when I do another post when I hit 20 (providing I don't quit before then).  There is also a cash shop but I've not even looked at it, no idea what's in there or how it may help/break the game or whatever, but I've been doing fine without it.  Finally, the game is plagued with gold spammers that sometimes makes chatting to other players impossible.  Luckily these fuckbends come and go so it's not a problem that is present 100% of the time and hopefully ATLUS will do something about it eventually (Not fucking likely).

Anyway, that's a little overview of Pandora Saga, check it out, it's worth a chuckle or two at least.

Sometimes Rage Quitting is OK

I hate to leave a game unfinished, so a rage quit for me is quite a rare thing.  Even games I have rage quit in the past and I know are complete garbage I have come back to at a later date, which is what makes this particular ragequit even more painful.

Yep, this is it folks, this is the last post you will ever see regarding R-Type Tactics for the PSP.

This is the last time you will see that R-Type Tactics logo for a long, LONG time.  This game is fucking arse and I can't be bothered anymore.  But what's strange about this ragequit is that it didn't come from a failure of a mission, or a bullshit enemy (of which there are a few) or anything like that, but I'm just....bored.

It's actually quite rare for me to get just flat out bored of a game, usually I quit for one of the reasons I listed above but this, this is just boring as all hell.  All the backgrounds look the same, the game is way, and I mean WAY too fucking easy but at the same time, it's also complete dogshit.

The mission that made me just turn off the game and never look back was in the 3rd chapter of the game, where you have to go around a black hole and kill an enemy flagship.  This mission isn't hard, AT ALL! the game makes a big deal of the black hole being super dangerous but it doesn't do anything, it just costs more movement to go near it.  There are arrows on the tiles that indicate that it would pull your ships that direction, but it doesn't actually seem to do anything.

On top of that, there are these bullshit enemy's that can fire lasers that one shot and the charge time for those lasers are ONE FUCKING TURN.  That means, every turn, unless you hit them on your turn, they can just blast the shit out of your armada.   That said, the mission is still a piece of piss and I cleared it no problem, just took a few more casualties than usual.

So yeah, no more of this crap.  Boring levels, boring ships, boring EVERYTHING.  Maybe I'll try again in 2 or 3 years...

Now that's some bullshit #2: Palette Swaps!

God.....

Oh god....

I just want it to end...........

But seriously, the reason I come with another rant about video game bullshit is because of R-Type Tactics AGAIN!  Fuck this goddamn game, it's so fucking boring but I'm too far in to just fucking quit, it has to be over soon anyway.

More to the point, I'm gonna be talking about palette swaps in games and why they're a load of shit.  Basically, look at the picture at the top, every single one of those are DIFFERENT FUCKING CHARACTERS in Mortal Kombat.  Now don't get me wrong, I like Mortal Kombat, but that is a load of ass right there.

You see, my problem with palette swaps is that it's just fucking lazy.  Sure, OK, maybe I'm being a bit harsh using Mortal Kombat as an example, they were trying to do the whole digitised thing and I guess they just didn't have the money to hire 6 different dudes as well as pay for 6 differently coloured outfits.  That said, this is still something that goes on TODAY! fucking palette swapping lazy bullshit.

In fact, while I'm ranting I'm thinking I can maybe forgive it in most fighters because a palette swap there is just a different outfit or whatever, but this goes on all the time in shit like RPG's.  If your going to make an RPG, the whole point is to have an interesting world to explore, and of course, in a big world of adventure every area is going to have its own species of monsters to battle, right? 

FUCKING! WRONG! Lots of RPG's do it but the worst offender I can think off the top of my damn head is the Final Fantasy series.  Now before anyone gets all upset that I'm ripping on Final Fantasy, I like the series.  Hell, despite being pretty stupid I did enjoy playing XIII and I've played pretty much every one to the end despite the heavily retarded stories in some of the later ones.  The one exception to this is 8...but that's another post for another time.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, RPG palette swap lazy bullshit.

 This little blue wanker here is a Flan, a common enemy in pretty much every Final Fantasy and this little bastard represents everything that's wrong with some design choices in RPG's.   These guys pop up in pretty much every single area but they change colour depending on what the area looks like (E.g Red ones in a fire area, blue ones in an ice area etc.) and it's just a stock, shitty enemy so that Square doesn't have to put that extra bit of effort designing an actual interesting fucking enemy.

But it's not just Final Fantasy that has a shit enemy like this that the devs can just lazily slap a new coat of paint on, it's pretty much every RPG ever.  But you know what? I wouldn't mind it so much if it was just the same enemy, but I'm supposed to accept that putting a new lick of paint on an old enemy makes it a new one?! yeah, fuck that!  But you know what? it's not RPGs that really bother me that much.  Sure, I'm ranting here but I don't foam at the mouth whenever I see an RPG palette swap monster really, what pissed me off today, was a boss in R-Type Tactics.

First of all, this boss pops up in the final stage of the 2nd chapter of the game.

First of all, all these fucking levels are the same.  Long boring tunnels filled with the same enemies and you can get through them by using the same strategy every goddamn time.  But the boring level design isn't what annoys me, that just puts me to sleep.

No what annoys me, is this!

That alien, is the iconic R-Type enemy.  I mean a quick google image search of "R-Type" brings up that guy, people recognise this boss quite easily.  So yeah, it was cool to fight him once near the start of the game as the first major boss battle in Tactics.

But then he turns up again, but purple.  Same attacks, same fucking stats, same EVERYTHING, he's just fucking purple, and this is what really got me.  So I did a wiki search, here is a list of the games in the R-Type series

• R-Type II (1989)
• Armed Police Unit Gallop (1991)
• Super R-Type (1991)
• R-Type Leo (1992)
• R-Type III: The Third Lightning (1993)
• R-Type Delta (1998) / US version (1999)
• R-Type Final (2003)
• R-Type Command (2007)
• R-Type Dimensions (2009)
• R-Type Tactics II: Operation Bitter Chocolate (2009)

(Good old wikipedia)

LOOK AT ALL THOSE FUCKING GAMES! Are you seriously telling me, that they couldn't have picked ANY of those games from the series and put a different boss at the end of that boring warp tunnel segment?! 

So they round off one of the most boring sections of any video ever with a boss recolour, well fucking done IREM, you're officially more boring than watching grey paint dry.

Oh and before I finish this stupid little rant, I can't believe R-Type tactics got a sequel, I feel compelled to track it down and play it just to see how they can further ruin a awesome shooter series by turning it into a shitty turn based strategy game.

Castlevania Series Run: Castlevania 3

So the third game in my Castlevania run was obviously Castlevania 3, and this game is fucking awesome.  Basically, all the shit Konami did in Castlevania 2 they realised was a complete total load of muffgarbage so they brought it back to its original format and holy shit is awesome.

This is going to be a kind of short post because there isn't exactly a lot to say about this game, it's essentially the exact same thing as Castlevania 1 but the game play is a little bit more refined the the level design is a bit more clever.  That said it's still full of its bullshit instant death traps and arsehole bosses that will just wreck your shit, but the game is still a ton of fun despite all that.

The game is a prequel and follows the adventure of Trevor Belmont, once exiled by the church, called to go and vanquish Dracula.  But of course you don't give a flying fuck about the plot to the old school 'vanias, you just want to whip Dracula in the FACE.

This game basically brought 2 new things to the table, level choices and a companion system.  First the level choices! for the first half of the game, you're not actually in Dracula's castle, you have to go on a grand journey to get there first.

While you are on your way there, you get to choose what kind of path you want to go down.  This has an effect on what companion you get down the road as well as what kind of enemies an bosses you encounter.  The downside to this new thing, is that despite being kind of cool it gets thrown out of the window after a while because there is only really one way you can go through Dracula's castle.

The companion system is also a little bit stupid.  Basically, if you look at the top picture, you may notice 3 people alongside Trevor.  The guy in the front is a little midget man who can climb on stuff, and he's fucking useless.  The woman(?) in the back behind Trevor can cast spells that are fucking useless.  Finally that vampire looking fuck in the very back is Alucard, and he can turn into a bat, which is the most overpowered fucking skill in any castlevania ever.  He can literally just fly over everything and then when you arrive at your destination, switch to Trevor to and wreck some shit.  It's a cool system but the fact that Alucard is the only good extra character makes the whole thing a little pointless.  Last time I played I got that mage bitch and I never ONCE switched to the companion, because why bother when I have a dirty big magic whip to dole out the harshness.

So basically, if you liked CV1, go play CV3, its more of the same fucking shit you like it so damn much.

A dark day for my game collection

Well, I was gonna use this space to write about Castlevania 3, but the most insane, idiotic thing has happened and it feels like it would be a crime not to rant about it.

Basically, at the end of May I moved to Japan, and previous to this my family moved to Sweden.  While all this shit was going on, I was attending university in a city called Preston and I couldn't exactly cart 5 consoles and all those games to Japan with me, so I sent them to my new home in Sweden. 

Anyway, I fuck off to Japan and I'm having a grand old time when I hear there are some problems and the boxes are being thrown back and forth between Preston and Germany like some kind of shitty fucking tennis match and eventually I just give up paying attention to the situation and bank on them arriving eventually.  I mean after all, even if they arrive I can't use them for a year at least, so no point worry about it, as long as they get there right?

FUCKING. WRONG!  So today, a single box arrives in Sweden filled with SOME of my stuff.  The majority of my rarer PS1 and Gamecube titles are intact but the consoles, and 4 sleeves worth of Xbox360, PS2 and Wii games are still not accounted for at the moment.  In place of my consoles and a shitton of games, I got a metric crapton of cutlery and dolls of Bill fucking Clinton.

I mean seriously, what the fuck, how do you fuck this up so bad?  I give the company NOTHING but video games, and they some how mix it in with fucking Bill sodding Clinton dolls?!  Oh yeah, and on top of that there is an assortment of Jay-Z CD's and some other artists that I've never heard of and are probably wank.

Now while writing this post, I got an update saying there are 2 boxes just milling about in a German depot somewhere that need to be delivered, so hopefully they contain all the shit, or at the very least the 100+ titles in those sleeves.

Tomorrow, I'll get back to the gaming and not post personal rants on how my shit that I can't use or talk about on here has gone missing, but this story is so stupid it needs to be told.

Snow White and the Huntsman Movie Review

Well I know I said I'd talk about video games but I do enjoy watching movies just as much and I saw "Snow White and the Huntsman" today so I figure why not do something a little different.

Anyway, Snow White is originally a German fairy tale that has been adapted into loads of different versions for TV and movies as well as theatre and even video games, maybe some of which I'll go away and play now that I've seen this.  Anyway, the version that people probably remember most is the Disney version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Even I remember watching this version as a young lad and I seem to have fond memories of it even though I remember exactly fuck all about it.  However what I can tell you is that Snow White and the Huntsman is COMPLETELY different, even from the original tale which I went and looked up on Wikipedia just to make sure I don't sound like an idiot after saying something like that.

I want to keep this "review" kind of brief and spoiler free, so I wont talk too much about the plot, but basically at the start of the film Snow White's kingdom gets its shit ruined by some woman who becomes the dark queen and snow white has to go on a quest to take it back.  If you've watched the Disney version or know the original tale, you'll probably find it's another version that twists the plot quite a bit, but there are so many versions of this thing around now that's not really a bad thing.

Anyway, is it any good? I would say yeah, it's not too shabby.   The set design is pretty good, when there is a battle they are usually well shot, the acting is also solid, which surprises me considering that chick who plays Bella in the Twilight movies is Snow White.  The movie makes use of CG for monsters and when people are throwing spells around but it never feels like too much, and when CG is used it's pretty impressive.

Sure, there are a couple of glaring plotholes that make me want to foam at the mouth and cry foul, but at the end of the day I'm watching a grimdark version of a fairy tale, so I suppose I can just sigh and let them slide in this case and at the end of the day, I had fun with this movie.  I didn't come out thinking it was anything amazing or something special, but it was entertaining and I'd say worth the money I paid for the ticket.

So check it out, you could probably do a lot worse than this movie. 

Sound Voltex Booth

Sound Voltex Booth is a new rhythm game I've come across during my travels around the various Japanese game centres and despite the strange name it is a hell of a lot of fun.

For those of you that need a western comparison, I suppose this game is most similar to DJ Hero, but even that is a pretty bad comparison as the control schemes are completely different.  It's your standard rhythm game though, notes flow down the screen and you hit the buttons in the right order not to fail the song. 

What you are probably noticing in that picture though is the two little turny knobs on the left and right side of the buttons.  There are notes in this game that take the form of long bars that you need to trace with an indicator in order to get the points.  In order to make that indicator move, you turn the knobs.  It's a very simple control scheme but the game still feels challening, and the way in combines button notes with the knobs can actually be rather challenging on the higher settings. 

Speaking of the settings, there are 3 difficulty levels in Sound Voltex Booth; Novice, Advanced and Exhaust.  I've not had too many runs of this game yet as I've only just started playing, but even on Novice the game can still be a bit of a challenge depending on the song.

As you can see in the above image, the Exhaust mode is locked, so I hope to god you brought your e-amusement pass card.  For those of you who don't know, an E-Amusement pass looks like this.

The E-Amusement pass is a stat card that works basically for all Konami games (IIDX, Jubeat, DDR and more) and having one is basically a requirement to enjoying any Japanese coin op rhythm game.  You see, playing without one is fine but the song list is actually pretty small.  As you play with a registered card though, you gain skill points and unlock points in order to get new music to play through.  Also having one of these cards allows you to access any new songs they upload to the game via the internet and they are not expensive to get hold of, about 300 Yen from a little dispensing machine inside the arcade.

So if you ever find yourself in Japan, give this game a spin.  If you don't ever come to Japan, or never plan to then cross those fingers and hope that they release a console version for you to import, but I don't think it's likely.

Just as a little bonus I've uploaded 2 gameplay videos so have a lookie see.