The Ghost of Sparta

Well, I’m finally back at college for yet another semester, but at least I won’t be going back after finals for a few months, which will certainly be pleasant. Over winter break, I snagged quite a few things, including God of War Collection for PS3. I was, to put it quite simply, not TOO interested in the GoW series, having played the PSP prequel Chains of Olympus and finding it not quite good enough to earn a permanent place in my collection. The main games, on the other hand?

Excellent. The games are fantastic, much better than expected, and definitely worth the money if you haven’t picked them up yet. The price is more than acceptable ($39.99 for the collection, basically $20 per game). The enhancements are really the selling point of the game though, as both now run in HD (1280×720 native resolution) with 2xAA for smoother and crisper graphics. Textures are upscaled so nothing looks particularly blurry, and there’s also the fact that it runs at 60 frames per second, for perfect fluidity. Trophies are icing on the cake, with two Platinum trophies on one disc. To begin with, the two games were released nearer to the end of the PlayStation 2’s life cycle, so they already looked good, but these games look damn good all considered. It’s…actually kind of sad, because a couple next gen games look like crap compared to these games.

For those not familiar with the plot of the games (they are wholly single player): you play as Kratos, a Spartan warrior who is out to defeat Ares, the God of War. That’s really all the basic plot of the first game that can be summed up without spoiling things. The second is even crazier; the first you have three or four bosses and that’s basically it (but plenty of miniboss fights), and the second takes the story and then pumps it full of fights. There are four trophies for killing bosses, and three of them have you killing 3-4 bosses each! The story is also surprisingly nothing to shrug at, despite what naysayers may think; it’s particularly well written and draws on incredibly detailed facets of Greek mythology. I was already intimately familiar with Greek myth and this game was basically like myth porn: everything cool you could possibly imagine is thrown in, from Perseus to Pandora’s Box to the Hydra to the Fates. The plot of the first game is somewhat lackluster in terms of length and scale (which isn’t really a detraction, just a comment on it); Kratos encounters a few mythological deities like the Hydra, Sirens, Medusa, and so forth but doesn’t deal with much else. The second is absolutely insane and references things the average person wouldn’t be familiar with, like Typhon or Euryale, and does it with style and flair. Plotwise it is superior by far.

Gameplay was something I already anticipated since I’d played the prequel but it felt smoother: you essentially get combotastic hack and slash, apparently in the vein of Devil May Cry (which for the record I couldn’t stand and returned after ten minutes, so I can’t really compare and am going off of what others say). There is also a liberal amount of puzzle solving. And by liberal amount I mean half the game. You will be dragging blocks, turning levers, and opening doors like no one’s business, because the Ghost of Sparta is way too busy puzzling to kill people. It’s kind of aggravating because the puzzles have a tendency of being pathetically easy, or ridiculously convoluted. Half the game is one gigantic puzzle, really. The second game is a bit better in this regard with puzzle and battle spacing, but some of the puzzles felt a little random to me (y halo thar Prometheus). Still, that shouldn’t dissuade a potential purchaser from snagging this set.

The first game has you gain powers primarily from gods, meaning they’re pretty strong, potentially even overpowered. Army of Hades and Zeus’s Fury, for example, will let you summon undead souls which automatically damage enemies or throw lightning bolts, respectively. The sequel has a much better set of powerups, which almost feel as if they aren’t powerups at all, but core gameplay mechanics, which is the best way to do things. The mechanics/powerups from God of War II carry over to the God of War III demo, which I’ll cover at the end of the review (assuming you don’t care about the rest).

There’s no multiplayer of any kind, but that should be common knowledge considering this is technically a double reprint, and multi would be both hard to do and heavily advertised if it had been added to the game. Other than the main story on various difficulties, there isn’t much to do, except for the Challenge of the Gods/Titans (first and second games, respectively) which are a punishingly difficult series of…well, challenges. Each one is ten challenges, consecutively, with no chance to break or save other than dying and restarting checkpoints. Most of them aren’t too bad, like kill x enemies without harming the others, or kill all enemies without being hit, but some can be downright cruel, like CotG #8, which has you fighting a seemingly never ending amount of Gorgons and undead soldiers. The soldiers are no big deal, but the Gorgons can freeze you into stone, and then instantly kill you, making the match that much harder.

Sound is something I haven’t touched upon in this review yet, and I need to badly. The God of War games are absolutely lush and rich with sound. The music is always fitting, be it epic battle themes with chanting choruses, or low strumming instrumentals, or simple silence as you solve a difficult puzzle. God of War II had a slightly better soundtrack in that it was more varied, and with additional enemy types and bosses, the development team had a lot more audio cues to use and work with, so naturally it sounds a lot better than the first game. Some stuff is recycled (namely Kratos’s voice, some of the monsters like the Gorgons, the Blades of Chaos, etc), but you hardly notice and it really fits together anyway, seeing as how the two games represent the first and second parts of single story.

The last thing I’ll mention is the voucher for the God of War III E3 2009 demo (what a mouthful). It comes on a little sheet and then lets you…well, download it. Simple code redeeming, as with multiplayer betas. The problem is that the demo is enormous, staggeringly so. It’s a whopping 2.67 gigabytes. Yes, that much for a demo that lasts tops 20 minutes. I will say it is a perfect example of what a demo should be, with lots of action, showcasing of new mechanics, and maintaining the same level of quality as the previous games. One of the Titans (perhaps Atlas?) is assaulting a city, and Helios is fighting him; Kratos rips through quite a few hordes to get to them, fires an arrow to fell Helios, and later rips off his head to illuminate his passage further. He is met with a collapsing tunnel he must rapidly fly through, only to meet the Titan on the other side, who is quite hostile, and as the two prepare to fight the demo ends. It’s quite exhilarating and not at all what I expected from the demo, having seen the end of God of War II. It feels a little odd in that the game doesn’t look quite as good as the PS2 games in terms of aliasing; the demo is much more jaggy and lacks some of the polish of the older games, but no doubt will look even better in the final version, considering the demo was made months and months ago.

Overall, I would highly recommend the games if you happen to like Greek mythology, intelligent but not brutal puzzles, and exciting combat. If you don’t, then this isn’t for you, at all. And a word of warning for those squeamish: the games are very bloody, and both feature nudity (female breasts, much more prominent in God of War II but clearly not meant for titillation, if you’ll excuse the pun). Enjoy it, for the glory of Sparta!

Going Places

Tomorrow, I wake up early to leave for Japan. I have to leave campus by 5:00 AM so I can catch a bus from Easton, PA to JFK Airport in New York City. What I could do is not get any sleep and sleep it off on the flight, but I would rather get my sleep for tonight.

Here is what the next few months will have in store for me. For over the next two weeks, I will be going on a trip sponsored by my school to Kyoto and Osaka. I will make a visit to Hiroshima, but I’ll mostly stay in Kyoto and Osaka. On January 22, I will break off from the rest of the group. While the group flies from Osaka to Tokyo to JFK to get back home, I will go in the opposite direction and fly from Osaka to Fukuoka. From the rest of January to early March, I will be staying in Fukuoka to go to a language school.

You see, my actual spring semester does not start until March. However, my school does not require a visa for the January trip. I can only stay in Japan for so long, so on March 10, I will be back in Florida for 10 days. I will have to pick up my visa and take care of other things before flying back to Japan. I will be spending the rest of March to July in Tokyo, where I will be studying at Kanda University.

It is now 9:00 pm.

By the time you reply to this post, I will probably be in bed falling asleep. If I do not log on tomorrow, then see you when I’m in Japan.

I’ve been looking forward to tomorrow for a really long time. It has finally come.

This is my Bankai!

After a long absence, and a lot of games I probably could’ve written reviews for, here I am, back for a review of the game Bleach: The 3rd Phantom for the Nintendo DS. The 3rd Phantom is a Turn-based strategy RPG based on Tite Kubo’s Bleach Universe, and is the 3rd in the Bleach DS line of games.

Gameplay and Story: Gameplay is primarily divided into two segments: Free Time and Combat. Free Time occurs before or after battle, and generally involves your characters interacting with other charcters in the world of Bleach. You’re given a specific amount of AP each chapter, and each free time event costs a specific amount of AP. Events can be anything, sometimes they’re for fun, sometimes they’re side-plots, and others grant your status upgrades, earn you items or increase affinity with certain characters. Later in the game there are Training missions, which you need in order to learn Bankai, and Hot Spring missions for…well, fanservice. Watching how you spend AP is also important, because landing on certain spots on the AP board can grant you nice items, stat increases and AP discounts.

Battles take place on your typical SRPG arena, where you will generally spend your time fighting Hollows.  Each character and enemy has a specific type (Power, Speed, Tech , All or Non-Com), which works as a type of Rock-Paper-Scissors system to determine who has the advantage in basic combat. Certain characters have skills, which are Kido (magic) abilities to attack enemies or heal/support allies, or character specific special attacks, like Getsuga Tenshou and Senbonzakura Kageyoshi. Applicable characters can also use Bankai when their spiritual pressure is maxed, vastly increasing their stats, giving them new attacks or a special character to control. Spiritual Pressure is gained by absorbing Reishi on the field, which is scattered about in paths or in massive groupings.

The story will take you to before the start of the Bleach series, roughly 100 years before the start of the manga/anime (and yes, for those of you far enough along, you’ll quickly realize that this game was made before a certain arc in the series). After a while, you’ll jump ahead into the current Bleach timeline, to the start of the Arrancar arc. A few things will remain the same, but by the mid-point of the game, the story will diverge into it’s own original storyline till the very end.

Fujimaru and Matsuri Kudo - The main protagonists of The 3rd Phantom.

Graphics and Music: Graphics are pretty basic for a 2D DS game. Those of you who have played the first two DS Bleach titles will notice little has changed in this iteration. Still attack animations are pretty nice, but you’ll likely start to grow tired of them by the end of the game. Music on the whole is pretty repetitive, the music on the battlefield never changes, and the background music is a mix of just standard music that doesn’t really stand out. On the bright side, while not voiced during scenes like in the Japanese version, all characters have been fully voices by their English voice actors in battle, and it’s not a bad dubbing job, really.

The field map and battle screens.

Replay: The story has two different characters, and while it won’t make much of a difference story-wise, some may want to play through the game as the other Twin. There are some many free time events that players will be unable to view them all on the first playthrough, so a 2nd will give you a chance to check out events that you missed the first time around. And then there is the post-game Bleach Tower, a 30-level challenge dungeon to test your skills, and beating characters on certain floors is the only way to unlock them for play.

Overall: If you like strategy RPGs and are a fan of Bleach, I recommend picking up this game. If you like SRPGs, but are not a big fan of Bleach and none of the stuff I mentioned made any sense, pass on this, there are games out there that you’ll enjoy more than this.

A Year Of Progress

Hard to believe it’s been over a year since I joined the Backloggery.   A lot of things have happened in that time.  I went from using the site as a place to organize my gaming collection to my current home.  It’s been a long journey.  I would have never thought I’d be so involved in the community a year ago.  I think what really helped me was finding a place where I could continue blogging after I left 1up at the very beginning of this year.  I tried to run a group blog with some people I knew from a forum, but I ran into a lot of problems.  I abandoned it and shut it down once I joined the Masters of Unlocking.  So yeah, here I am.

If there is one thing that I can say about my first year on the Backloggery, it’s that it changed the way I played games forever.  Over the years, I amassed a large gaming collection.  A lot of games in my collection were those that I would play for a while and then stop to move on to something else.  This is what usually happened with my RPGs.  I was pretty lucky if I managed to finish a game considering how many games I owned.  My collection would be a lot bigger, but I was always selling and trading in games as I bought more.  Because I used to count Formerly Owned, Other, and Borrowed games in my collection, I can’t say how many games I owned last December.  I also can’t tell you how many Unfinished I used to have around that time because I nulled titles that I haven’t started playing.  If I were to guess, I would say that I had around 80-85 Unfinished games when I joined the Backloggery.  I started going back through my old games right away, playing the many PS2 games that I bought and never really played.  Blame that on my old gaming habits.  I started out with short games like Area 51, Sonic Rush, and God of War and even finished games soon after buying them.  It was a new idea that I’d finish Chrono Trigger DS within a month of buying it.  The old me would have never done that.  In fact, that was the first game I beat this year.  I soon began to tackle other RPGs, like Persona 4, one of the longest games in my collection.  That game took up a lot of my time and I’m amazed that I was able to finish it while dealing with school at the same time.

I didn’t start keeping track of my Unfinished count until this summer.  Now that I was out of school, I had plenty of time to work on games I wasn’t able to play because of college.  I could have used the time to work on some of the bigger RPGs, but I put that off for much later.  At the beginning of July, my :U: count was at 70.  This was thanks to me beating a number of games at school and getting rid of the ones I knew I wouldn’t enjoy.  Otherwise, I sat through my games and played them to the end.  This meant sitting through some rather difficult games like God Hand, a game that wore out one of my PS2 controllers.  Bak’laag was going to take the better of me thanks to me buying and getting a ton of games through trades, but I fought back in what was the Summer of the Beat.  For every game I bought or obtained, I finished a lot more.  My greatest accomplishment this summer was beating my N64 collection.  Granted, it was a matter of going back to old files and finishing what should have been done years ago, but at least they’re Beaten or Completed.  Had I focused entirely on lengthy RPGs like Final Fantasy XII or Dragon Quest VIII, I could have come close to becoming a Minion of Bak’laag.  But I didn’t.

Winter Break Gameathon

Well, FINALS are over and I’m on break for three weeks! What a perfect time to start PURGING some games right?! Hence the new category name… Because I felt that Atelier Rarutos just did not cut it for such a category. Sure the Atelier reference was nice, but it was a little bit too out there. XD

Anywho, I have finally reached the TROOTH last night in Persona 4, so now I’m thinking about what games to take out over the break. Currently in progress are Dissidia: Final Fantasy (Which I’m only really playing on bonus days, which is mostly Saturday) and Pheonix Wright – Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, and I’m on the last case of that one, so I should be able to finish it up in about two days if I focus on beating it. I also started up Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to beat it on top of the other stuff. I KNOW I need to start working on a Zelda game this break, and I’ve decided on beating Twilight Princess. I just got the Master Sword, so I shouldn’t be TOO far off from beating it…

Anywho, I made a list of games that I think I should be able to beat in the next three weeks:

• Phoenix Wright – Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations (U => C)
• Pokémon Rumble (U => B)
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (U => B)
• Dissidia: Final Fantasy (U => B)
• Super Mario Sunshine (U => B)
• Metroid Prime (U => B)
• GrimGrimoire (U => B)
• Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (U => B)
• Capcom vs. SNK 2 (U => B)
• Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (U => B)

I’m not sure if I’ll even be able tog et through all of them in three weeks, as I’ll be out with friends and family from time to time as well, but I think I should be able to knock out at least 75% of them? I’m considering adding one more to the mix as well, as I don’t have a proper RPG on there quite yet. Probably Atelier Annie, as I heard it wasn’t that long in the first place, and I love GUST games, so yeah. Hopefully I can make good progress! I’ll probably beat Pheonix Wright first, and take out Metroid Prime as soon as possible, as I’m at the second to the last boss anyway. For Capcom vs. SNK 2, I’m just going to consider it beat when I beat it in Arcade Mode once, because that game kicks my butt and is way more technical than most fighting games I’ve ever played. x_x

Anywho, since P4 is done with, I’ve been at a loss as to what RPG I should beat next. Well, after Atelier Annie I guess. Likely candidates are Final Fantasy XII (where I’m getting rather close to the end), it’s just kind of hard to pick up after a long time again. Mother 2 (where I am somewhere in the middle of), Cross Edge (I’m also somewhere in the middle of this one),  Disgaea (I’m also in the middle of this one… ) or if I should just start on something new! XD Oh yeah, I just remembered I promised to start Demon’s Souls so I can play with other Backloggers… /hmm

Well, that’s it I guess… If you guys think I should add any other games (if you think I’m actually capable of beating it on top of the other games), then feel free to suggest some!

R-R-Random!? #2,don’t buy me a coffin yet.

Yes,I still liiiiiiive.But there’s no excuse for my lazyness,really:wish i could say stuff like “well,i didn’t post anything for 2 months because i was so focused into developing the ultimate cure for cancer” BUT it’s just not possible.The only partial excuse that i can find is that i have started writing a novel.I would have liked to join the NaNoWriMo challenge but 1) it was too late 2) i don’t have much apart from the majority of the characters and the setting right now.Still,i had these things floating in my mind since sometime ago so i finally decided to write ‘em down.They may be awful ( and a good bunch of them probably are) but hey,it’s not like i’m aiming to be the next Tolkien.

Now that my university has entered easy modo after the usual November-ish boatload of stuff ,my amount of free time has increased however,which means that i’ll post more often.Hopefully.I swear,i can do it dammit.

Now that my pathetic excuses and propositions are out of the way,we can finally talk business:let’s start with some animu.Umineko for example,though sadly there’s not much to say apart from “WTF am i watching” right now.

Ushiromiya Kinzo,after having marathoned 24 episodes.

My main issues with this adaptation? To put it simply:Awful pacing,low budget,subpar action scenes,randomly cuts epic parts or just leaves them out,forgets to describe what actually is going on the screen. Therefore,i can hardly suggest this series to anyone.If you can,play the SN.If you cannot,forget about this and move on,there’s plenty of anime out there that is surely more worthy your time.

Moving on,at least Darker Than Black 2 is awesome.

Some may argue that it’s inferior to the first season both in terms of pacing and soundtrack,but it’s nonetheless a good watch.Hopefully,this week Hei will kick some ass while wearing his old Batman coat and Suou will shoot things without having to go through her magical shoujo sequence everytime she pulls out that rifle of hers.

Last but least,Needless is going to end this week.

I suggest watching this if you want a Gurren Lagann-esque show (on a MUCH smaller scale) with plenty of  fanservice and funny moments:just be careful to switch your brain off before starting it.

Speaking of vidya,i can proudly announce that i’m now the owner of a 250GB PS3 Slim (which won’t be touched until Christmas because 1) it’s supposedly a gift 2) i would totally forget about everything else i’m playing at the moment and it wouldn’t be a good thing in the slightest).Suggestions about games are welcomed,the only one i have for it right now is Valkryria Chronicles and i’m up for pretty much anything as long as it’s not a 2D fighting game.Was thinking about Uncharted 2 or Assassin’s Creed 2 but there’s still time for taking a decision.

About what i’m playing right now,i’m focusing on beating Tales of Symphonia:Dawn of the New World on Wii this week.

The plot is laughable at times,and you can probably find this game on a dictionary under the word “Rehashing”given that that 90% of the locations are the same old ToS ones with a few changes and less blur,but it’s still a fun game to play.The battle system is the usual Tales of thing,there are plenty of different monsters that you can get in your party and the skits are nothing short of awesome,best ones i have seen in the series.

Another important thing is that i have recently discovered the Phoenix Wright series *insert HOLD IT! or OBJECTION! here*and i love it.

On Trials and Tribulations right now,for those that have played it i’m currently stuck on cross-examining Mr Kudo for the 2nd time.Randomly presenting evidence has NOT won me any points with the judge and has led me to resetting the game way too many times:hopefully i can beat this before Christmas.

I have also started playing Atelier Annie,which is not a bad game at all.

Characters are well-drawn,there’s plenty of voice acting and being a little girl that must synthetize lots of different things is actually pretty fun.Haven’t found anything blatantly wrong with it yet,still…the sheer number of cutscenes can get really annoying:go the shop,cutscene starts.Go to the library,cutscene starts.Get back to your workshop,and another cutscene STARTS.

Started playing this once,and after being cutscene’d 5 times in 5 different places i simply switched off the game and watched TV.It’s not that bad usually though and that’s why i keep going.

Well,that’s all folks! See you before Christmas for sure.

Press R To Review – Super Paper Mario

Super Paper Mario has a strange position among the other games in the Paper Mario series.  It’s only game in out of the three that’s not an RPG.  Unlike the original Paper Mario and The Thousand-Year Door, Super Paper Mario is a straight-up platformer.  Sure you can gain health and strength upgrades through points (experience), but I wouldn’t call them RPG-like since those are the only things that resemble an RPG.  You have no control over your upgrades and you can’t upgrade accessories like badges in the first two games.   Super Paper Mario has gotten a lot of criticism from people for not being an RPG.  It’s a bit unfair when trying to play the game for what it is.  It’s unfortunate,  because Super Paper Mario is a decent game on its own.   Note the emphasis on decent instead of great.   It’s easily my least favorite game in the series.

Let’s start off with the story.  In light of a recent kidnapping of Peach, Mario and Luigi go to King Bowser’s Castle to retrieve her, only to find out that Bowser was not responsible for it.  Of course, it had to be someone else.  It is revealed that the kidnapper is Count Bleck, a sorcerer who wields an ancient, prophetic tome called the Dark Prognosticus.  In addition to Princess Peach, he kidnaps Luigi and Bowser, and brainwashes Bowser’s Koopa and Goomba army.  He then employs the hypnotic powers of his right-hand woman, Nastasia, and forces the marriage of Princess Peach and Bowser in order to, as the Dark Prognosticus fortells, unleash the destructive power known as the Chaos Heart.  Count Bleck uses the power of the Chaos Heart to open an inter-dimensional rift known as “The Void”, will eventually grow large enough to engulf the entire universe.  It’s the type of evil plot that would make Exdeath from Final Fantasy V happy.  Mario meets a butterfly-like Pixl named Tippi, and a wizard named Merlon, who have come in search of Mario.  They inform him that he matches the description of the Hero, described in another prophetical tome called the Light Prognosticus, which is able to halt the impeding doom of The Void.  (Isn’t that covenient?)  To banish the Chaos Heart and reverse the destruction, the Hero requires the eight Pure Hearts, artifacts created from genuine love.  Mario and Tippi set off in order to collect the Pure Hearts and stop Count Bleck’s plan.

Flip this.

Paper Mario games aren’t exactly known for the strength of their plots.  They’re better known for the strength of the writing thanks to Nintendo of America’s excellent job on localizing the dialogue for North America.  The dialogue often makes inside jokes and references to other Nintendo games among other stuff.  It’s partly the reason why I enjoy Paper Mario so much.  Still, the story is fairly weak compared to the last two games.  In the first game, you were on a quest to find the seven Star Spirits in order to defeat Bowser, who had become invincible thanks to the power of the Star Rod.  In The Thousand Year Door, you were on a quest to retrieve the seven Crystal Stars and rescue Princess Peach from the X-Nauts, an alien species introduced in the second game.  Sure, both games had similar formulas, but at least the game made them interesting through the cast of characters you met along the way.  The first two Paper Mario games had a mix of both familiar and new characters that were interesting.  Who can forget the Rawk Hawk from The Thousand Year Door?  Sadly, Super Paper Mario doesn’t have an interesting cast of characters.  The supporting characters that join your party and the majority of the villains just aren’t that memorable.   Sure, there is the genius dialogue, but it doesn’t make up for the lack of interesting characters.

Fun fact: I went through the entire game without doing any stylish moves.

If the story is lacking in Super Paper Mario, then the game itself has to be good, right?  It is for the most part.  If you don’t compare Super Paper Mario to the first two games, you will discover that it is a very enjoyable game on its own.  The game is divided into 8 chapters, each with 4 stages.  In between each chapter, you will view cutscenes and get to do a bunch of stuff in Flipside, the overworld and main hub town of this game.  It is there where you can rest at an inn, buy items at stores, talk to the locals, and do other stuff.  The majority of the game takes place in 2D, although you can switch to 3D in order to explore areas and to solve puzzles.  Using the Wiimote like a spotlight, you can highlight and read the descriptions of items and enemies, or spot any hidden objects.   The catch to flipping to 3D is that you can only stay there for so long before you start losing health.  I understand the need to keep people from abusing the flip function, but I find losing health to be annoying.  There are times where I have to wait a bit for my bar to recover before flipping again.  It’s unwelcome when I’m trying to get through an area that involves a lot of flipping.  The same thing applies to when I have to flip to get around certain enemies, regardless of whether they can flip or not as well.  Even though the game was made for the Wii, the game makes very little use of the motion controls.  You hold the Wiimote vertically as if you’re handling an NES controller.  It’s probably a good thing Intelligent Systems set up the controls the way they were.  I don’t see it working any other way.  Pixls, or fairy-like characters, grant you the ability to do special moves like using a hammer, bombs, or turning sideways to get through obstacles.  In addition, you get to control Peach and Bowser in addition to Mario as your main character.  Peach can defend and float with her parasol while Bowser has double the strength of the others and can breathe fire.

Running through stages while really big is always fun.

The game has a lot going for it with the ability to flip from 2D to 3D and back and the ability to play as Bowser and Peach in addition to Mario, but the game suffers from one major flaw.  It’s way too easy.  There was hardly a time where I was on the verge of death and don’t recall getting a single game over.  The Paper Mario series isn’t known for being notoriously difficult.  If that is what you are looking for, you should seek a Shin Megami Tensei game, especially Nocturne.   The first two Paper Mario games weren’t exactly difficult, but they did provide enough challenge to keep me from getting bored, especially near the end of both games.   In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, I leveled up as I should and did not run into much trouble until I fought the last boss of the game.  I had to upgrade my side characters, stock up on items, and literally everyman the Shadow Queen.  There was none of that in Super Paper Mario.  Like I said before, I could hardly recall a time where I was near death and don’t think I ever got a game over.  I managed to defeat a bunch of bosses just by spamming certain moves over and over with certain characters.  Especially the last boss.  It would have been nice to have some challenge of any sort.

The game looks visually sharp, so I have nothing to complain about here.  The worlds are bright and colorful and with the exception of a few levels, I was able to see where I was going.  If there was one thing I could do to improve this game in the visual department, it would be to take more advantage of the paper style of the game like the first two games, like folding into a paper airplane in The Thousand-Year Door.

The soundtrack is underwhelming for the most part and doesn’t really stand out in my mind.  A lot of the tracks make a throwback to the 8-bit era .  The music isn’t horrible that it causes rugburn to my ears, but it’s nothing spectacular.  Even though I finished the game a little over a day ago, most of the music blurs together and I have trouble telling a lot  apart.  I haven’t played the original Paper Mario in years, yet I can still recall certain tracks.  I couldn’t do that with Super Paper Mario.

I shouldn’t be comparing Super Paper Mario to the first Paper Mario and The Thousand-Year Door, but I can’t help it when the third game in the series shares a number of the same elements as the other two games as far as game structure and recurring themes go.   As long as I didn’t compare Super Paper Mario to the other two games,  I enjoyed it the most.  Just take the game for what it is.  Super Paper Mario is great if you need something that won’t make you rage or aren’t good at platformers in general.

Reach Out to the GAEMS!

It’s been a while, and I just feel like posting right now, despite not knowing what I’m going to be blogging about. Basically, the current school quarter is hell right now, and I just want to get through with it! Finals are next week, and hopefully I’ll be a lot more happy by the end of them! Next quarter should be better, only taking three classes, and one of them is a Japanese film and culture class, so basically, I learn about movies and stuff from Japan, and even get to watch them! It should be fun, I hope.

Anywho, on with the actual reaching out to the GAEMS. In the past couple of months of school that I have not posted on this blog, I basically have gotten a bunch of games and beaten quite a few. Of course the Get-Beat ratio is probably very very very very very very unbalanced, but at least I’m doing better in making some progress! Although I’ll probably never really get even close to beating Bak’laag like Wan-chan and Kyuko-chan are trying to do, I’ll try to at least thin out the amount of games I have to beat. Some really good ones too! I really want to replay some old games that I have beaten before though, but the fact that I have so many new games to just plain start just makes it hard to do so, sadly. Anywho, let’s talk games that I’ve beaten since Mana-Khemia 2!

I finally got to beat the second Ace Attorney game just days after beating Mana-Khemia! Not sure how I started playing that again out of the blue, but when I did, I just got hooked again! And I do agree with everyone that the last case was well worth getting through. It even brought me to tears~! Ahh, the wonderful friendship between Phoenix and Maya. It’s such a great thing!

A typical boss fight in Muramasa: The Demon Blade

I also DID end up beating Muramasa: The Demon Blade, as I had mentioned before. On the 22nd no less! Which is/was the day of BEAT for me. I’ll get into more details about that later I guess. The criteria for Muramasa’s beat was beating both Momohime and Kisuke’s stories. Some people just marked it as beat after beating one of them, but I felt that wasn’t right. I still have to get two more endings for both characters though, so I might go for the Complete eventually. Also, about the quality of the game, it’s a whole lot of fun! It’s not as RPG-y as Odin Sphere for sure, however it still was great slashing through all those ninjas and demons as Momohime and Kisuke, with the great variety of katanas. My favorite parts of the game has to be the boss fights though, like in Odin Sphere, they’re quite fun and difficult. Also, the fact that my favorite seiyuu, Sawashiro Miyuki voices Momohime is always a plus. The only flaw I found was in the localization, in which Ignition opted to only translate the JIST of the dialogue. I feel like there should be a whole lot more to the characters than what I read in the translations, especially since they kept the Japanese voices in, it seems like they omitted a lot of little details in the conversations they had. Knowing the little Japanese that I know, I did catch a few things that weren’t put down in the text that was said. So I was quite disappointed with that. I’m sure the original script was just as beautiful and deep as Odin Sphere’s. If only Atlus had done the job again… Heck, I think XSEED would have done a better job if only they hadn’t given the game to Ignition. They did the same with Arc Rise Fantasia, and now I’m afraid for the life of that game’s translation too. ;_; If anyone has played Nostalgia, please let me know of the translation quality!

I also FINALLY ended up beating Arcade mode in BlazBlue with ALL the characters. I need to get through the story mode still though, at least before Continuum Shift comes out here. With fighting games, it’s hard to distinguish when the game is beat. So, I guess I’ll just make my own judgments depending on the games themselves. If I feel like I can be good enough to beat Arcade mode with all characters, then that will be the beat, however, with games like SNK vs. Capcom 2, I think beating it once will be enough to be honest. The system is much too advanced for my RPG-mind. And I never plan on playing it very competitively anyway, or with friends, and if it’s with friends, it’s only for fun in the first place. *nods* Speaking of BlazBlue, I recently made a Noel lovebar!

No hat

358/2 Days Boxart

I also beat Kingdom Hearts: RE:Chain of Memories as well as 358/2 Days. RE:Chain became quite tedious to go through after a while, and Reverse/Rebirth was a pain because some of the decks that Riku gets just plain SUCK. (Stupid Wonderland Deck. ) It’s a good game nontheless, and the surprise boss that wasn’t in the original made me squeal like a fangirl! *ahem* Also, 358/2 Days was such a blast to play through, I just couldn’t stop playing it! The story was kind of lacking, but I still enjoyed it. Xion is pretty awesome too, in my opinion. I know a lot of people don’t like her and consider her a filler, but she was still pretty likable in my eyes. It’s a great game, and those that love Kingdom Hearts will most likely love it as well. Besides, Roxas > Sora. The game very much made me want to play Kingdom Hearts 2 again, and it seems a lot of other Backloggers felt the same way. I remember Noi and Noxie having it on their Now Playing lists after they beat Days. I would have too, if I actually had it with me at the time. XD

The last game I beat was Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. I was in just a couple of hours away from beating it before starting it up again. I had no idea I was so close to the end, so it surprised me at how quickly I beat it! I mostly beat it to justify my purchase of Bowser’s Inside Story though, which I heard was ridiculously awesome, so I’ll get to it eventually. I can’t say much about Partners in Time because I can’t remember most of it, but the last stretch of it was pretty fun! I did like the game, and the writing was good as always for the Mario RPGs! I’m sure I’ll enjoy Bowser’s Inside Story quite a bit too, and hopefully I won’t stop in the middle of it and not play for 4 years and forget everything about it before coming back to it like I did with Partners in Time.

I got quite a few games over the past three months or so. Honestly, I really really shouldn’t have gotten so many. Who knows when I’m going to play all of them? I need to be stronger and actually RESIST buying games, especially the ones I don’t even plan to buy! Anywho, games I got since my last post: Tales of Vesperia (PS3), Metal Gear Solid: Essential Collection (PS, PS2), Persona (PSP), Disgaea 3 (PS3), Uncharted (PS3), Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days (DS), Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (PS2), Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon (Wii), Demon’s Souls (PS3, The Deluxe Edition), Banjo-Kazooie (XBLA), Shadow Complex (XBLA), Little King’s Story (Wii), Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky (DS), Tales of Innocence (DS), Romancing SaGa (PS2), Devil Survivor (DS), Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS), Uncharted 2 (PS3), Atelier Annie (DS), Stella Deus (PS2), Left 4 Dead 2 (360), New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii), Metroid Prime Trilogy (Wii), Devil May Cry: 5th Anniversary Collection (PS2), A Boy and his Blob (Wii), Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles (Wii), and most recently, Pokemon Rumble (WW). Yeah, that’s a lot. And I STILL WANT MORE. Like RE1 and 2 for PSN among others. Also have Spirit Tracks and Crystal Bearers coming in next month, as well as AR TONELICO III(!!!!!!!!!!!!!) in January.  Bak’laag would be proud… I don’t know if that’s something I want or not though. Orpheon-sama is probably shaking his head as he’s reading this list going, “Oh Rar, you disappoint me.” too.  ;_; I’m sorry Orpheon-sama!

Speaking of Ar tonelico III… Once it was announced, I preordered as soon as I could have, and I REALLY REALLY want to get the Hymmnos Concerts and everything else~ *_*

I was too lazy to search for a screenshot, so I'm just using one of my sigs.

One more thing! I am near the end of Persona 4, reaching out to the truth! After months of Orpheon-sama begging me to play it, I’m finally nearing the end! It seems I won’t be able to max out six of the Social Links though, sadly. Those being Fortune, Temperance, Death, Hanged Man, Hermit, and Tower. *sigh* Oh well, there’s always a second playthrough! I’m going to try to get the True Ending! However, I’m going to consider getting the good ending as beat first, because well… Everyone else has anyway. Oh SMT, how cruel thou can be with thine enemies. Stupid Shadows costing me some hours of gameplay by killing me in the middle of grinding. T_T Oh well, it’s all the more gratifying when you blast through the dungeon I guess! Persona 4 is great fun, the characters are quite lovable, and the story’s philosophies on the way people think aren’t too far off from the truth. It’s quite interesting to think about actually, that’s probably why I like the Persona games though, they have very deep and compelling stories behind them.

Err… Yeah. I think that’ll be it for now. I kind of want to talk about my themes too, but I’m not sure if I should, or am allowed to or not. So yeah. XD

Well, thanks for reading everyone!

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.