Shoot Outside of the Screen

This is going to be a somewhat unusual post, because unlike my previous ones, I’m not reviewing anything here. I’m introducing a new category to my portion of the blog, one dealing with whatever miscellaneous items I decide to put in. Kind of a long winded intro to a post that’s fairly simple by comparison, but oh well.

As the title might have clued some arcade-loving readers in, this post is about rail shooters, and my thoughts on them. I’m an avid fan of rail shooters. Absolutely love them and cannot get enough of them (not necessarily in one sitting. A lot of them tend to exacerbate carpal tunnel, after all). The title stems from one of my favorite video game series of all time, The House of the Dead (where the announcer prompts you to perform said action in order to reload. In the arcade ones anyway, on consoles you get a button for it. No idea what the Wii one is since I don’t have a Wii yet. Digression over). This post isn’t really about a specific game or series, though.

Light gun games evolved over decades of putting cabinets in arcades, getting player feedback, and refining. Something too easy would be removed, something too hard would be fixed. This went on for a while, but it’s come to a stop. Why? The advent of “next gen” graphics. Said graphics have utterly killed the rail shooter scene for the most part, and there are hardly any new properties being released in arcades as a result. The most recent this blogger can think of that’s arcade-specific is The House of the Dead 4 Special or maybe Time Crisis 4, though the latter received a port to the PlayStation 3. I mention that port for a very specific reason: it failed commercially, due to the utterly ridiculous peripheral released with it, the GunCon3. I own the game and GC3 and can safely say it’s a hassle to set up and the calibration of the gun is virtually impossible due to the small LED reading lights required for minute portions of the game being extremely fickle. Couple that with the second weakest entry in the series I’ve played, and you have yourself a bit of a problem.

Rail shooters are by their nature usually very difficult or of only average difficulty (it’s a rare one that is legitimately easy), and as such once the game is cleared, there’s generally nothing else to do. The player was guided by the hand through the game, and unless it offers branching paths like some The House of the Dead games do, there’s little else to explore in the game. Short length and lack of replayability serve to make developers shy away from this sort of game, especially considering arcades are hardly frequented as they used to be and consoles are much harder to develop for than they used to be, what with how complex games are nowadays.

The one saving grace for rail shooters is the Wii. It gets a lot of flak for having a seemingly endless stream of rail shooters intermixed in the hardcore games it gets, with titles like Ghost Squad, The House of the Dead: Overkill, and Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (and soon Darkside Chronicles!) standing out in particular. People I know don’t seem to like the Wii because of this, they want more games like Super Mario Galaxy or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Hardcore games? Well, sure, but the debate between hardcore and casual is something else entirely. My problem is people seem to want the genre to die and then turn around and hypocritically claim they wish arcades weren’t losing so much business, etc.

The rail shooter is a dying breed, and gamers are the only ones who can keep it alive. If you never liked a rail shooter, I’m not asking you to. If you do like rail shooters, I ask you to support them, in arcades if you have them nearby. All that’s left are games that have been released already and are just having cabinets shuffled around by this point. BlazBlue, a single game, single handedly rekindled the interest in fighting games for many people. Let’s work toward a similarly influential rail shooter.

Welcome to the fold, Raven.

It’s been a while since my last post, but school has been rather hectic; nonetheless I apologize. For those who have taken a good look at my backlog, they’ll notice quite a few Armored Core games. In fact, they’ll notice every single Armored Core game released in the US is in the backlog! Why is this being brought up? Well, naturally, the subject of today’s post is Armored Core 3 Portable. AC3P was released to Japanese audiences in late June 2009, and was very popular among the AC fans over there, being one of the premier titles of the series. Many were expecting no US release (including myself) and were surprised to find it available in the US, albeit exclusively as a downloadable game via the PlayStation Network, at the pretty low price of 14.99 USD (the Japanese release on UMD retails for the equivalent of $45).

Armored Core 3 was originally released in 1998, so one might consider this release pretty terrible if you went off that alone, but the game was and is still quite amazing. The basic premise of Armored Core games is to custom build your own giant mecha (the titular “Armored Core”) and to pilot it in a variety of single player missions following a usually bare-bones story, engaging in AC vs. AC Arena matches, and going head to head with other players. AC3 stands out as one of the better plotted games in the series, but if one compared it to virtually any story-driven game, AC3 looks like crap; these games are not really meant for story, but it can certainly be compelling. I myself have written much on the stories of the AC games, and there is much room for fanfiction considering the variety of characters and complete lack of actual people in the game (literally, no human ever appears).

The gameplay of every AC tends to vary slightly, but AC3 unlike a lot of the other games is pretty balanced, allowing for many different part combinations to be used in your AC: there’s no shortage of parts, considering ACs are composed of as many as fourteen separate parts and there’s minimum half a dozen parts in any given category (there are some parts, like the CGP-ROZ generator, that are simply the best, but these tend to be rare and often are the internals, which nobody likes worrying about as much as they have no visual effect on your death robot). Not much has changed in terms of gameplay from the original release of AC3: there are new parts, eleven in total, some of which are new such as the CHD-GLITCH head, and others which are remakes of parts from previous AC games, such as the MLR-ZMX hover legs (from AC2 and its immediate sequel, Another Age). There is also additionally a new Arena opponent from the Dengeki Hobby Magazine novelization of Armored Core, but unfortunately he is laughably easy to defeat (he does net you quite a bit of money, though!).

Controls and graphics are some of the biggest gripes people might potentially have with the game, but surprisingly, they work wonderfully. There is some mild input lag, but nothing serious (I was able to easily complete the entire game in less than a week, only ever being annoyed at the controls once), and initially the placement of buttons is a little suspect (triangle and circle serve to raise/lower view, when it was originally the L2/R2, and the D-pad received weapon switch, core functions, extension functions, and left arm functions/item activation). The button combo eventually makes total sense and one can use it quite easily, although it can sometimes be awkward to use a laser blade with D-pad down when your thumb normally is on the analog stick to control your AC, but it does work.

As for graphics, I was expecting some good stuff since the previous Armored Core PSP game, Formula Front (which, by the way, did get a US release on UMD) used the Nexus era graphical engine, which is in turn an enhanced version of the AC3 engine. AC3 does not disappoint and has staggeringly well detailed environments, at the sacrifice of resolution and antialiasing (things aren’t too bad, but occasionally things will be jaggy, perhaps about as often as it happens in Crisis Core). Texture resolution is additionally toned down, but considering those can be toned down without any real change in gameplay except for one mission where the resolution is a bit clearer, it’s no big deal. There is slowdown occasionally, but it takes a good bit happening onscreen; I only encountered slowdown in two missions, one featuring a total of 3 ACs and an MT with heavy particle effects, and the second featuring 2 ACs and a handful of smaller enemies, but extremely detailed water processing plants. I expected to see slowdown elsewhere but was pleasantly surprised I did not.

The AC games have always had great sound, but AC3 and Silent Line (the immediate sequel) are by far my favorites of the series in terms of music, featuring a very organic set of synthetic sounds, giving the regular rhythms of what would alone seem mechanical a more lifelike and pleasing sound, perfectly tuned for lighthearted or thematically dark moments. Sound effects are of course well done. The game also has a staggering amount of voice acting (all mission briefings and all dialogue in-mission is voiced, mail and Arena information are the only narrative elements not voiced), and incidentally it is identical to the PS2 release. FROM Software, the company behind the AC series, bought the old translation and voice work from Agetec, the original AC localization company.

Overall, AC3P is a great port of a great game, and at the current price it’s an excellent buy. Additionally, Silent Line Portable (JP: November 2009) and Last Raven Portable (JP: March 2010) have been announced for some time, and FROM bought the translations to those as well, so one can expect to see them stateside as well. I’ll be sure to buy and review them when the time comes. Till then, Raven.

I Have These Games To Play

Remember how I posted that rant about my week from hell?  I ended up going to the hospital that night.  A combination of stress, lack of sleep, and not eating enough was what did me in.  Not a good night at all.  I decided to go to sleep after finishing my blog that night, but I went to the bathroom before going to bed.  I sat on the toilet and soon before I knew it, I passed out and landed on the floor.  I don’t know exactly how long I was out for, but I guess it was about half an hour.  The scary thing was that I was the only one awake on my floor at the time.  So I woke up in a cold sweat and sat in the bathroom stall for about 10 minutes before crawling out of the bathroom.  I tried to walk back to my room, which wasn’t very far away from the bathroom, but I couldn’t make it.  I woke someone up with my shouting while I was out and got him to call public safety.  I then had two options: I could sleep off the rest of the night and go to the health center the next day or go to the hospital right away.  I decided to go the hospital.  I ended up staying in the emergency room from 3:30 am to 11:30 am.  Thankfully, they didn’t find anything wrong with me.

If there was one thing I got out of it, it was that I really need to look out for myself more often and change some of my habits.  I now eat 3 times a day, try to go to bed earlier than I used to, and do my homework so it doesn’t pile up at the last minute.  This means I have to cut back on some of my gaming time, though.  Also, I’m no longer writing match descriptions for the Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues on Foxkei because I don’t have the time to do it and I really need to take it easy for the rest of this year.  Thank you to Scion_of_Life for taking over for me.

When I do get the time to play video games, I have this little problem:  I have nothing to play but RPGs.  I burned through most of my other games during this summer, September, and a good part of last month.  I’m actually busy with homework this year compared to last year, so I don’t always have the time to play RPGs.

I was talking with a friend at lunch on Sunday and I was telling her about my problem of having nothing to play but RPGs.  She suggested that maybe it wasn’t a bad thing after all because I can pace myself and set aside certain hours to play through them.  I never thought of it that way before.  Usually, when I get advice about gaming in college, it’s to stay away from RPGs as much as possible.  I see where people are coming from when they say that, but I love my RPGs too much to not play them.  With games like Viewtiful Joe or even The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, I would play them for as long as I could and not stop until I was ready to give out.  With Viewtiful Joe, this wasn’t a problem since I beat the game in 5 hours on Kids Mode, but Wind Waker was another story.  Near the end of the game, I decided to do a no sleep until clear.  Problem was, I had to get enough Rupees to buy the Triforce Maps needed to get the Triforce Pieces.  Even with the assistance of a guide from Gamefaqs, it was very time consuming.  By the time I got to Ganon’s Tower, it was 5 am.  At that point, I had two options: go to bed or stay up and beat the game.  Mind you, I was up all of Saturday night and was on a roll, so I went with the second option.  I stormed Ganon’s Tower, fought all the bosses, and made my way up to fight Ganondorf.  The fight was fairly easy and I dealt the final blow.  It was now 7:30 am.  There went my Saturday night and my normal sleep schedule for most of next week.  I would feel like crap for the next few days, but it was worth it to beat Wind Waker about 7 days after finishing Twilight Princess on the Wii.

I wouldn’t do that anymore because I’m trying to improve my sleeping habits.  Right now, I’ve been focusing all my attention on Tales of Symphonia.  I’ve been pretty good about putting time aside from that game since it’s very easy to find places to save.  It also helps that there are plot synopses to remind me where I last left off.  Why can’t more RPGs have that feature?  I try to get in at least an hour a day during the weekdays given that I can get my homework done in time and have nothing else to do and give myself a lot of time during the weekends to make progress.  So far, it’s been going great and I hope to move on to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door once I finish Symphonia.

For those of you in school, how do you handle playing RPGs?

The Week From Hell

I’m in the middle of the week from hell.  Things have been really rough for me and I’m ready to snap.  I could have gone on a massive rant of sorts on Twitter, but nobody wants to see a Twitter flood.  I might as well rant about my life on a blog post.  That’s what the Masters of Unlocking is here for me to do.

So, where do I start?  I’m currently a junior at Lafayette College.  I major in History, which means that my workload is fairly easy compared to some other people.  I have time to play a lot of video games whenever I’m not studying or doing other things.  I can also put aside time to watch anime since I no longer go to anime club, but gaming takes priority for me.  I usually give myself enough time to study for tests and get my homework done.  I pulled one all-nighter and did a few no sleep until :B: so far this semester.  Sure, I have to deal with psychology and the lab, but it’s more time-consuming than tough.

Things seemed to be working fine for me until this weekend.  I had this thing called Fall Break the week before last week where I didn’t have class on Monday and Tuesday.  Most people went home to spend time with family and do other stuff.  Seeing how Florida is home for me and I’m currently in Pennsylvania, there was no point in me flying all the way back home for so little time if it wasn’t a holiday or something like that.  Thanksgiving is a whole different story.  I could have spent the time to get caught up with a lot of homework and stuff, but I didn’t.  I spent most of break chilling out and playing video games.  It’s something I do best.  I could have seen a movie or two, but I used part of my time off to get my car fixed.  You see, my 2004 Honda Civic was having car problems.  I had trouble accelerating and struggled to drive up hills.  I thought I was having engine problems, so I brought it over to a car repair place.  They told me that I was having transmission problems, so I took my car to a Honda dealer.  It turned out that a bunch of animals got in my car this summer and chewed on the wires.  My car now runs like normal.

Last weekend was when things went to hell for me.  My parents came up to visit me this weekend, which meant I wouldn’t have time to do a lot of other things that needed to be done.  I didn’t get any homework done on Friday.  I don’t blame myself for not getting anything done that day, but still.  I should have spent a good amount of time on Saturday getting that work done, but the FFVI marathon stream distracted me and prevented me from being productive that day.  I had a great time at the stream and talking on Skype, but it would screw me over for the rest of the week.  The stream was worth it, though.

So I actually started doing work around 1 pm on Sunday.  Shit, I had a lot to do this time around.  Let’s see, I had some reading I had to do, write a 3-5 page paper that was due on Monday, study for a Japanese and Psychology test for Monday, and get psych lab stuff ready for Tuesday.  I did the reading that afternoon, the paper that evening, and stayed up late studying for two tests I should have prepared for far longer than I started.  I only got 2 hours of sleep last night because I decided to have a coffee specialty drink at 8 pm to help me get through my work

I manage to wake up the next morning.  I take my first test at 9 am.  I finish it.  I go to my next class at 10 am.  I take another test.  I finish it.  I go to my last class of the day at 11 am.  I manage to stay awake during that time.  I got to see my parents one last time before I had to drive them to the airport to drop them off.   I spend the rest of the afternoon working on some stuff for Psych lab.  I tried to get some other homework done, but my body gave out on me by 7 pm.  So much for getting other work done.

I wake up around 8:30 am today.  I feel like crap, so I stay in my room and start up Symphonia, which was the only free time I would actually have for today.  I walk over to my history class at 11 am, the first class I have for today.  After that, I grabbed a quick lunch and made my way over to psych lab around 1 pm.  It wasn’t too bad, but it was time consuming.  I usually get out at 3 pm, but with the way things were this week, I got out around 4 pm.  I didn’t have much time to do a lot of homework while my body was still functioning.  I tried to get a lot of stuff done, but again, my body gave out after 7 pm and I lost the motivation to do anything.  I studied for a geography quiz and thought I was done, but no, I have a pretty big assignment I have to do for Japanese for tomorrow.

I lost myself.

I could have snapped and let out a blood-curling yell, but I got a hold of myself and counted to 10.  I lost any motivation I had left to do anything.  I should have called it a night and gone to bed right away, but I made this blog post.  I knew I would lose important hours of sleep, but if I don’t write this now, I’ll never write it.  Part of me tells me that it was my fault that I brought this all on myself, but another part of me says that it couldn’t be helped.  To think that it’s only Wednesday.  I’m hoping Thursday and Friday don’t bite me in the ass.  It’s the last thing I need right now.

Maybe my sleeping and sleeping habits have something to do with this.  I usually go to bed around 12 to 2 am and wake up around 8 to 10 am.  I usually get something to eat right before class by grabbing some snacks (banana, muffin, cereal bar, etc.) and a bottle of orange juice.  I would eat at a dining hall or at the food court, but the food isn’t good enough to be worth waking up for.  I eat lunch at 12:15 and eat dinner around 5:30 pm.  I’m really picky about the food at the places where I usually eat, so I don’t eat as much as I should.  Usually, I’ll have pasta and a sandwich for lunch or dinner if I don’t like anything else I see.  This is sometimes followed by dessert, usually ice cream.  I eat much better on the weekends, though, and generally eat more food.

It is now 1:40 am.  I’m now going to bed.

I hope my life goes back to normal by the end of this week.

On Anime Club

This blog post should have been a really long rant about my college’s anime club.  I would have gone on and on about how I don’t like the lineup and why I no longer go to club.  People I talked to on AIM, MSN, and Twitter never heard the end of it from me.  I was in the middle of writing a lengthy post so I could organize all my thoughts in one place without having to tell the same story over and over, but I ended up writing way too much for my own good.  Why write something that will hit 2,000 words when I could say everything in a few paragraphs?

I was pretty active in my school’s anime club during my freshman and sophomore years.  The way the club functioned was that we would choose 5 shows to watch for the rest of the school year.  Every week, we would meet in a classroom and watch all 5 shows on a projector screen.  Half of the shows were comedies and the other half were dramas and action based shows for variety.  The lineup was arranged so that people could come and go as they wished.  This was how the club functioned in the previous two years.  It worked out well and I liked the other  people who went to club because they were polite and not very rude.  We didn’t have problems with people talking nonstop during shows.  Sure, some people would shout out a word or a line, but that was about it.

This year, things were different.  The shows were picked in a strange way unlike the way we picked shows in previous years.  The majority of the club voted on Library Wars, Ergo Proxy, and Axis Powers Hetalia so that they were put in the lineup from the very beginning.  Since we weren’t going to vote on those shows during the first meeting, we didn’t see the first epiosdes of all three shows during that meeting.  That left three remaining slots to fill up.  We had three of six shows to pick from, the six being Rozen Maiden, Kuroshitsuji, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Nabari no Ou, and 07 Ghost.  Voting was set up so that we had these choices:

• Cowboy Bebop vs. Samurai Champloo
• Rozen Maiden vs. Kuroshitsuji
• Nabari no Ou vs. 07 Ghost

Cowboy Bebop was something that everyone in the club has seen at least once, so I didn’t want to see it again.  I went with Samurai Champloo since I’ve never finished that show.  Rozen Maiden was a show I thought I wasn’t going to like, but grew on me after finishing the first episode.  I wish I voted for that instead of Kuroshitsuji, a show I ended up not caring for.  I tried watching Kuroshitsuji this summer, but I stopped after the fourth episode.  The last category was a lose-lose situation for me because neither show interested me.  Nabari no Ou had the potential to be good, but it was meh.  I was glad the club dropped the show because I hear it gets disappointing later on.  I didn’t find 07 Ghost to be much better than Nabari no Ou, so I voted for the show I disliked the least.  The three shows that filled the remaining slots in the lineup were Samurai Champloo, 07 Ghost, and Kuroshitsuji, which joined this year’s lineup with Axis Powers Hetalia, Ergo Proxy, and Library Wars.

Aside from the disappointing lineup, the one thing that’s annoying me about club this year are the new club members.  They are pretty rude and don’t know when to shut up.  I can understand when people make comments during certain parts of an anime, but they should better than to keep talking loudly.  I go to anime club to watch anime, not to hear annoying commentary from people.  A few of my friends had to leave club early for this reason because they made more serious shows like Ergo Proxy unwatchable.

I don’t go to anime club anymore because I’m unhappy with the lineup and can’t stand annoying people who ruin enjoyment of certain shows.  I’ll probably go back to anime club once I catch up on the shows I like so I can watch them with other people, but that’s if some of the annoying people in the club learn to stay quiet more often.  If not, I’ll just watch anime on my own.  It’s as simple as that.

R-R-Random!? #1,it really is.

New blog post from me,this is quite an event.I know i should be more active,but my university gave me a number of books i have to write stuff about and i really don’t feel like writing a lot in my free time too.Anyway,this incredibly useless (or awesome,depending on your POV ) corner is about what i have been watching/playing/doing lately so feel free to either enjoy my ravings or to run away from this as fast as you can.
Starting with anime,Valkyria Chronicles is finally over this week.

I swear,if i wasn’t constantly making fun of this with someone else i would have dropped it by episode 5 or so.Think of something angsty,and this anime has it.Think of some rushed plot point that is poorly conveyed,AND THIS ANIME HAS IT.I think i’ll give it a 6 anyway in the end because it’s decently animated,the story is interesting and i liked a few characters,but had i played the game first i’d have probably given it a solid 4:there are lots of changes from what i know,and i cannot name a single one that improved the story.
Moving on,i have started watching CANAAN again thanks to Arc who gave me some motivation to finish it.I’m only on Ep 6 so far,but things are becoming even better than before thanks to some delicious Liang-Ji insanity.

In the above pic,she is detonating remote-controlled bombs.Planted at an anti-terrorism conference.Gotta love that attitude of hers,i tell you.

Last but not least,Umineko.

This week will feature my favourite moment ever,so i’m anticipating the incoming episode quite a lot: there’s a high chance that DEEN will screw it badly though *cough likeprettymuchanyothereventsofar cough* but i’m keeping my fingers crossed.I was surprised by how good the new OP has turned out so maybe,just maybe, things will turn out just fine.

Vidya-wise,the only relevant news is that i have started playing Devil Survivor.

So far it’s pretty awesome i think,lots of choices to make and routes to end up on.The change from the usual JRPG system turned out well,story is interesting,graphics are fine.It doesn’t help that i’m finding more than half of the female cast to be terribly annoying though,and that the only decent one went ranting to me about her lifelong HUGE problems 10 minutes after meeting her:if this keeps up,i’m seriously considering going for a BRO end.
Also,it’s a SMT game.I love this series but terribly hate it at the same time too every now and then, because of the usual trolling which is even more deadly in a SRPG like this one.What’s the point of planning carefully a team if every member of it gets randomly frozen by a single Mabufu thrown by an enemy 5 levels lower than mine? Subsequent rape,Game Over.Bah.

On a completely unrelated note,i wish i had someone motivating me to play Wild Arms 5 by the way.It’s objectively a good game but i never feel like turning on my PS2 for it and instead get stuck in endless Melty Blood VS matches which incidentally yield no progress at all,for the joy of Bak’laag.

Tha’s about it,i guess.Next news from me will be probably in the Ah-nee-may corner for a quick review about Valkyria Chronicles or Umineko,so see you later.

The Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues

Starting with this post, I will be spotlighting all sorts of stuff and tell people what they’re all about.  Tonight, I’m going to cover the Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues, two character battle tournaments that run side by side that are currently run in a small forum known as Foxkei.  In this post, I will explain what both tournaments are all about, how they work, a bit of history behind the tourneys, and why you should consider participating in both of them.

The Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues are two character battle tournaments run by fellow Backloggery member SnakeEyez on the small forum Foxkei.  They are character battle tournaments in that people vote based on who would win in a fight.  This is different from a popularity contest like the character battle held on Gamefaqs during the summer.  The Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues are run three times a year: January to March, May to July, and September to November.  Each season starts off with a nomination phase, where anyone can sponsor an anime or RPG character of choice.  There are no restrictions on sponsoring, so nominations are open to everyone.  The nomination phase closes after a month or whenever the roster gets filled up.  Up to 31 characters can be sponsored for either tournament on any givevn season.  After the nomination phase comes the actual tournament.

The tournament phase lasts for about six weeks.  31 characters enter the tournament and fight each other in matches until there is one person left standing.  Characters are randomly put in brackets at the beginning of the season to make the fights more fair.  2 matches are held at a time in both tournaments, four matches lasting 48 hours.  People vote on a character based on who would win a certain match.  You have to write at least 3 sentences explaining why that fighter would win so the vote can count.  If you’re up to it, you can write out a story vote, which has to be more than 500 words.  Your vote will count as 2 votes instead of one.  At the end of the match, whoever has the most votes moves on to the next round.   There are several conditions for winning, only one of which has to be met:

1. The opponent is killed
2. The opponent is knocked out of the arena
3. The opponent can no longer fight
4. The match reaches the 30 minute limit and the match is determined by the fighter with the least amount of damage taken.

Tiebreakers are determined by SnakeEyez.  There are five rounds: 1st round, 2nd round, quarter finals, semi finals, and finals.  A Wild Card Match takes place at the end of the first match.  Basically, the 31st character in the tourney will have to fight a Wild Card character, someone who lost a match sometime during the first round and is randomly chosen to have a second chance at fighting.  Who knows, that one fighter may make it all the way to the finals.  In Anime Tourament Season 2, Lucy (Elfen Lied) lost against Seijuro Hiko in the first round and was picked as a Wild Card Character.  She won the Wild Card match, won round after round, fighting Seijuro once again and defeating him this time, and advanced to the finals, where she lost against Vash the Stampede.  Whoever wins the finals earns the title of champion.

What makes the Anime and RPG Tournament League different from other tournaments?  There are a number of things.  The first and most important one is that once a character wins a tournament, he or she can no longer participate in the League.  Fans will be happy to see their character of choice win a tournament, while those people who would rather not see a certain character constantly participate in the tourneys will be happy not to see their faces again once they become champion.  Such characters include Uchiha Itachi (Naruto) in Anime Tournament Season 7 and Cloud Strife in RPG Tournament Season 4.  If a character participates in a tournament and loses a match, he or she will have to sit out the next season.  This keeps certain characters from dominating the brackets.

As far as characters go, anyone is fair game.  There are only a few things to keep in mind as you pick a character.  First, he or she has not participated in the previous season or is a tournament champion.  Second, the character should not be so powerful that no one has a chance of fighting against him or her.  If anyone has an issue with a certain character, it’s usually decided through a poll.  There are some people who will pick joke characters because they would like to see how he / she / it would do in a tourney, even if that character has no chance of winning. One person sponsored Magikarp for the RPG Tourney and Sukamon (the turd Digimon) last season and the one match that each character was in ended up being one of my favorites.  Just because you sponsor a good character doesn’t mean that he or she will easily win a tournament.  Anything can happen.  There was the one season in the Anime Tournament where Hao Asakura from Shaman King was on a winning spree, taking down Syaoran (Tsubasa Chronicle), Kyosuke (SoulTaker), and Rukia (Bleach) before being defeated by Major Kuseanagi (Ghost in the Shell: SAC).  Then there are some characters who are picked over and over because they’re so popular with people.  Some noteworthy characters include Jessica (Dragon Quest VIII), Major Armstrong (Fullmetal Alchemist), Major Kusanagi, and KOS-MOS (Xenosaga).

If you’re looking to be active in the Tournaments beyond the matches, you can write cutscenes.  These are stories written by different people to help flesh out New Alexandra, the fictional city where the tourneys take place.  These cutscenes explore the characters who currently or previously participated in the tourneys as well as the goings of the city.  There’s an underpaid and overworked person who works at registration desk and has to put up with all the people who want to participate in the tourney.  What do some of these fighters do when they’re not in matches?  That’s why the cutscenes are there.

The Anime and RPG Tournament League have a history spanning five years.  The tourneys trace their origins back to 1up.com, when SnakeEyez set up a club called the Anime Tournament League in late 2004.  It was the first tournament club of its kind on 1up.  With the help of a small but active group of members, the Anime Tournament League experienced a successful first season with Vampire Hunter D as the champion.  The Anime tourney was so successful, an RPG Tournament League was set up by SnakeEyez with the first season running at the beginning of 2005.  Again, it was successful, with Auron winning the finals.  The Anime and RPG Tournaments were run side-by-side for the first time during Season 2 in late 2005.  Both the Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues would go on to become one of the longest and most popular clubs on 1up.  For 10 seasons from late 2004 to early 2009, 1up hosted both tournaments.  This May, the Tournaments were moved to Foxkei, a small forum largely made up of former 1uppers like myself.  Season 11 saw a lot of success on the forum and it looks like the tournaments are there to stay.

Why should you participate in the Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues?  You get to see which characters from the Anime and RPG multiverse would win in a fight and vote on those matches.  You may learn about new anime and RPGs you never heard of before.  Most important, it’s a lot of fun.  Even if you don’t plan on voting on any matches when the tournament phase begins, you can always sponsor a character.  All you have to do is sign up for Foxkei.

Season 12 is underway and is currently in the nomination phase.  You have until the end of this month to sponsor a character of your choice.  Be sure to read the rules and FAQs before you do anything.  Also, check the Season 11 tournament boards to see if a character was picked this past season.

Anime Tournament League

RPG Tournament League

I probably won’t be as active on this blog for the next two months because I’m going to help write match descriptions for some of the characters to inform people who they’re going to vote for.

See you over there.

My Silly Days

Welcome all, to Rarutos-sama’s first post as a Master of Unlocking! Unfortunately,  I’m not nearly creative or witty enough to create an interesting category name, so this video game category posting thingy will be called Atelier Rarutos! Which is obviously named after the Atelier series of games by the producer company of GUST. An Atelier is a workshop, that is generally used for alchemy in these games, so… I guess I will be synthesizing some reviews?

I think I’m too biased to write a full on review for this wonderful gem known as Mana-Khemia 2:  Fall of Alchemy (Which is badly subtitled, the original subtitle in Japanese was: Ochita Gakuen to Renkinjutsushi-tachi, which is roughly translated to the Alchemists and the Fallen Academy, oh NISA, you silly silly translators.), so I will just give a brief (okay, maybe not BRIEF) summary overview of the game’s elements, what I liked about it, and what I didn’t like about it. So yeah, I’m not sure if I’ll ever start writing full on reviews, and I’m just choosing to write “reviews” like Kyuko-chan, so yeah. Anywho, enough rambling and onto the game!

The Japanese Boxart

As I have previously played all the Atelier games that have been localized in the United States by NIS America, I have a pretty strong opinion on the series already at hand. The Atelier series and GUST have obviously earned my great respect. Honestly, I’m not sure what it is, but I love GUST and their games quite a lot. These games are definitely not for everyone though, people that don’t enjoy JRPGs would absolutely despise it, and those that don’t like being in menus, collecting items, and synthesizing items for quite a long time wouldn’t like it much either. However, this is why GUST had moved from the mostly alchemy centered system of their previous games, and then move towards the move typical JRPG genre, with “save the world” type situations. I personally think they did a great job! I started with the original Atelier Iris, and I loved it to death, it’s only flaw was that it was much too short. However, with each new game, they got at least 5 hours longer, and now we have Mana-Khemia 2.

I absolutely loved the first game in terms of story, characters, and gameplay. It would have been my favorite Atelier game that I have ever played if Atelier Iris 2 wasn’t so awesome. And now that the second game has come out, and I’ve played through it and beaten it, I’m still not sure if I like the sequel better or not. I just know that they both are such great and fun games that I never really get tired of. The story in Mana-Khemia 2 is hardly ever serious, like in the first game. The characters are all very quirky, some of them are normal, (or at least they try to be) but the majority of them have quite extreme character traits that are played for laughs, which makes the opening song’s title, “My Silly Days” quite fitting. For example, Lilia (Or Lily, if you prefer) has got to be the biggest Tsundere I have ever seen. She litterally is on the far sides of both the Tsuntsun, and the Deredere spectrums, being extreme cases of both. It’s quite hilarious how she goes from ordering Roze around, to fantasizing about him in very interesting situations… Nontheless, she is one of my favorite characters in the game, it’s funny because a lot of the characters even call her filthy, especially since she does go to such conclusions quite easily. Obviously, the characters are quite the highlight of the whole game, as there are different “Character Quests” for each character that you do during the “Free Time” portions of the game. The story itself is interesting, as the two main characters’ (which is new to the series, as you get to choose between two different main characters, which effectively doubles the amount of playtime) stories would eventually intertwine.

In terms of gameplay, the battle system has not changed all that much from the first Mana-Khemia at all, there are still Intimate Stikes, but this time, you don’t have to end the support actions with just the main character, as anyone can do them in different combinations this time. The Unite Gauge is very similar to the Burst Mode that was in the previous game, and there are also Finishing Strikes like in the first game as well, with each character having their own unique “Limit Break” showing off their most powerful attacks. They also added an Intimate Guard, which allows for extra defensive moves which are quite a big help in battle. The battles are very very fast and fun, although they can get tiresome if you just want to move on in the story, but overall it’s a great battle system. Although the game itself is a little bit too easy, as always with GUST games. Fortunately though, there are quite a few tough bosses in the game, I’ve never had so much trouble with bosses in any Atelier game before, it was quite disappointing when the Final Boss wasn’t that tough, although that might be because it’s at the very end, and every character has probably already maxed out their Grow Books.

A Typical Battle in Mana-Khemia 2

The Grow Books also make a return from the first game as the main “leveling” system, in which as you synthesize items, stat increases and skills unlock in the Grow Book, effectively making alchemy quite important for battle, (as your stats will stay low if you don’t synthesize) and not just for usable items for healing or support. However, they did include a hidden leveling up for HP and SP (which is the game’s MP), that rise after getting a certain amount of AP (Ability Points for unlocking stuff in the grow book). The Grow Book is stated to be most similar to that of Sphere Grids in Final Fantasy X, if you were wondering how it worked exactly. The Grow Book is relatively the same as the first game, with a little twist, to unlock the last Grow Book slot for each item, one must Synthesize every item to 100 Ether Level, which is tough in the beginning of the game, but gets ridiculously easy later on with different Synthesis skills. At first, I thought I was going to have a hard time with it, but it isn’t that hard at all to get 100 Ether Levels in later parts of the game.

The school system is back as well, in which one must attend classes, and do assignments based on alchemy or combat, and if you get good enough grades, you can get enough free time to do character quests or sell items at the Bazaar. Character quests are mostly for character development and determines what ending you will get. In this one, you can do all the character quests for each character (which is different from the first, in which you can do all character quests except the last one for all characters except the one who you want the ending for), and just choose who to talk to at the end to get their ending, which makes getting endings quite a lot easier.

The music is mostly in the same style as the previous Atelier games, very fantastical. I personally do love the music in these games, Achiwa Daisuke and them do quite a good job. The music in Mana-Khemia 2 doesn’t let me down at all, also, I absolutely LOVE the fact that you can change the battle music to battle themes from even the first game after beating one of the character’s story. It’s simply bliss to be able to choose awesome songs like Nefertiti and Repulsion for battles.

Graphics aren’t ususally a big deal to me, and I’m quite a big fan of 2-D graphics, which is probably why I am drawn to these games so much. In battle, the sprites are very detailed, it’s quite amazing. I normally don’t care about graphics or anything though, so I don’t have too much to say. The dungeon design is overall good in my opinion, I didn’t have any problems with it at all, or did I feel like it was getting repetitive, even though we did have to run through the same dungeon several times, but like I said, I’m just biased I guess. XD

I have to add this one little thing though, honestly, the thing that had me the most disappointed about the game, was the opening movie. They totally got rid of the animeness and used CG, and placed a random dragon in it for half the movie, despite the fact that said dragon has NO screen time in the game at all whatsoever, unless you count the mooks you fight. Needless to say though, My Silly Days is awesome, although it’s not Shimotsuki Haruka like all the previous ones that came out here, it’s good enough. Marie gets some props though, she sang some songs in the first Mana-Khemia as well, so yeah. Anywho, check out the opening below.

Anywho, overall the game is simply awesome. I truly love Mana-Khemia 2 and all that it gave out to me. It’s also the longest Atelier game I have played, as I effectively clocked about 85 hours or so until I fully beat the game. Which is great! Most of the Atelier games only lasted 30-40 hours, and felt too short, so I was very happy with this revelation. Love the two main character system, makes the whole thing longer, and you get to see things from different perspectives. Great game, was very sad to see it end, but I think it’s a good thing that I did finish it the day before my summer ends, as I won’t have as much time for other games anyway. It’s a good game to end the summer with, and I’m glad that I got to use up my last two weeks of summer on it.

In terms of summer, I think I have beaten the most games I ever have in any summer vacation. Yay me. Next game on the list is Muramasa: The Demon Blade, which just arrived at my doorstep yesterday. I’ve already started, and I haven’t quite gotten into it yet, but it’s really a lot more actiony than Odin Sphere, but we’ll see as I progress! Anywho, thanks for reading my first post! Hopefully it wasn’t TOO much of a read.

Golden Shiny Wire of Hope

Another post, this time about a classic game, oh my! I recently picked up Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation Network, having never played the game before and having never had any real desire to when looking at the exorbitant cost of a complete copy (let alone a black label complete copy). With that out of the way, I downloaded the game and played through it, and thus, here’s the review!

I will definitely say that Final Fantasy VII shows its age in this direct port to PSN: if you play on the PS3, everything is severely blocky and looks pretty terrible (compared with a previous PS1 game I played off disc, Parasite Eve, FFVII looks like absolute crap, actually. This can be chalked up to the fact that FFVII was released prior to PE, but still). On PSP, the experience is on the whole a lot better, and the graphics appear smoother and more streamlined due to the far lower resolution of the PSP’s screen. Disc changing is made a lot less annoying since you can just hit the PS button and bring up a disc switch submenu when prompted, making life easier.

Now for the meat of the review. Final Fantasy VII was first released in 1997 and is currently the best selling edition of the Final Fantasy franchise, which in turn is one of the highest grossing video game franchises on the planet. As in previous editions of the series, the Active Time Battle system is present, allowing the player to experience real time combat that is still turn-based (which sounds silly when you write it out, but it is rather fun). There were some random oddities with this system in some boss battles, where a boss would use multiple moves in a row, even at the start of a battle, and there would be no way to defend at all. The crane boss and the final boss did this in particular, the final less so. The materia system helps flesh out character customization beyond the basic leveling, enabling virtually every character to become whatever the player wants (although some are clearly suited for certain roles, such as Aeris being a white mage-style healer and Cloud being a soldier-style attacker).

Gameplay is smooth and excellent in battle; outside of battle, not so much. Part of the problem is that the prerendered backgrounds aren’t as detailed as one might like and as a result it sometimes can be difficult to see what you’re supposed to be doing (literally). The title of this post comes from one of those moments, where Cloud is required to jump onto a moving wire, but the prompt for doing so is confusing. The game is also riddled with tiny wannabe sidequest minigames, which I felt were a bit annoying when they kept being used again and again (the most egregious offender was probably the snowboarding one, which, while cool, made no sense to me). Perhaps not surprisingly, some of these minigames are actually harder than the game itself; I found it difficult to steer straight on the snowboard, but crushed any boss with relative ease.

Speaking of ease, Final Fantasy games are generally story-driven, and as such the difficulty is not prohibitive like some other games can be. That said, I was shocked by how utterly cake the game was. I ignored several very good powerups/items until the very end, such as Ribbons (which I never acquired) and the Big Guard enemy skill (which I used only on the final boss to prevent cheapshot kills, since without it the boss could KO any of my party in one hit were it directly targeted). Had I gotten so much as Big Guard, I would have breezed through the game even faster than I already did, which would be in my opinion ridiculous. I don’t mind when games are easy, but it’s a little shocking when you find that a single skill can literally make the difference between a good level of challenge and no challenge at all.

As for the plot of Final Fantasy VII, which is lauded by everyone I know, I have to say I wasn’t that impressed. It was enjoyable, yes, and it was certainly compelling enough to find out more about the game (and a certain death got to me more than I thought it would, considering it’s the worst kept spoiler in all of gaming history). The amount of language and blood in the game surprised me a good bit, and I half wondered sometimes if the game had needed to censor itself less to appeal to a wider audience than to earn a lower age rating on the case. The character development was rather nice, although it was pretty clear some characters were developed much less than they probably should have been (Tifa, Yuffie, perhaps Cid. Mind you, I didn’t do any sidequests, and I believe there’s one in Wutai, so perhaps not Yuffie). The melding of technological and mystical was nice, although I could have done without some of the heavier handed exposition essentially claiming Shinra was killing the planet by harvesting materia…which the party also conveniently uses.

Overall, the game was excellent, but quite dated, as previous generation games tend to be more than a decade later. It was very much worth playing and the price of entry was extremely low, so I have no real complaints. I would recommend the PSN version to anyone who doesn’t own the original game, especially if said person prefers black label releases (PSN games are always the black label release; in the case of FFVII, this is easily determined because there is no analog stick support, merely directional pad support).

Prime Time

Mission Debriefing: Prime Time
The first two Metroid games have been re-released with new Wii controls, and bundled together with Prime 3: Corruption as the sleek and sexy Metroid Prime Trilogy. I’ll be reviewing each game in turn as I play them. Up first, is one of my favorite games of all time and my big introduction to the Metroid Franchise: Metroid Prime.

Gameplay (10/10)
The big change here from the Gamecube release is the new controls, and I have to say it is a great one. Using the Wii mote is such a smooth experience, it’s really tailored for the game perfectly. Manual aiming makes things easier and more difficult, as hitting that pin-point shot is now easier without auto lock-on, but hitting smaller enemies (like War Wasps) can get a little annoying early on. As far as the difficulty goes, the game is much easier with the Wii controls (or maybe I’m just that much better after all these years). Players looking for something of a challenge should skip Normal (which should be Easy) and start with Veteran (Which is more Normal). Normal wasn’t the least bit challenging (I never lost more than 3 Energy Tanks all game), and while Veteran had a few tough bosses, it was otherwise pretty easy and I cleared it without dying. I haven’t started my Hypermode run yet, but I’m hoping it’s a challenge. Thankfully, scans carry over between your games, so once you’ve scanned everything, you can focus on the battles and gameplay completely.

Visor Switch in the Chozo Ruins

Story (7/10)
The story does a good job of taking a backseat in Prime to the gameplay. It’s skillfully revealed across a number of scans throughout the game, so it can be completely ignored if you choose not to scan everything, and there are no long, drawn out dialogued cutscenes, not that there’s any real dialogue in the first place.

A Space Pirate in the Phazon Mines

Graphics (10/10)
Prime Trilogy sports a degree of upgraded graphics from the original Gamecube releases, and as such, as it did back in 2002, Prime looks beautiful. The detail in the world is excellent, and it’s not hard to get lost in the feeling that you’re actually there.

Replay ability (10/10)
This category all depends on the type of player, but Metroid is a treasure trove of replays. Between all the collectible items to get, to scans (Which you can clear in one game or over a few games) and three different difficulties, the game does not get old quick. And players looking for a challenge, making speed runs to beat the game as fast as possible or trying to sequence break to get strong items early, or skip them entirely, makes for plenty of challenges to aim for with each playthrough.

Flaahgra, Prime's 2nd Major Boss

Overall
Prime is still a great game today, even if you played it back on the Gamecube, the updates and new controls alone makes this a worthy purchase and play. True, it’s not the most challenging game in the franchise, but newcomers and veterans alike will have something to play for here.

(Credit goes  to Wikitroid for screenshots.)