Final Fantasy 13-2: Story Paradox

SPOILER RIDDEN!

After playing through Final Fantasy 13, I had plenty of complaints. The characters were flat, Lightning never had any sort of arc or change in mood, there was never any point where I worried about or cared about anyone in the cast except maybe Sazh since he was the only character with believable emotion. But the most offending part about FF13 was the abhorrent battle system and how it systematically removed all decision making from the user, so much so that you had to swallow the incompetence of the AI in every battle. My complaints of the poor characters, nearly non-existant villain, and terrible plot was hugely overshadowed by how much I hated the battle system.

With that in mind, imagine my surprise after playing FF13-2 which returns my most hated RPG battle system of all time and somehow manages to make me forget about that due to just how awful the story is. From the onset it is filled with contradictions. Immediately we see a character Noel go through a time gate in Valhalla and moments later is confronted with another gate exclaiming that, "he's never opened a gate before." We JUST watched you do it!

Add to that even more obvious moments where Caius explains how he just killed Lightning, then you kill Caius and RIGHT after that Noel monologues how there is no death in Valhalla.....except for those people who JUST died!!! Why fight there at all? Why is Noel so fixated on not killing anyone, specifically Caius, but if no one dies in Valhalla WHY are you concerned at all? Oh but wait, people did die...(except Caius inexplicably comes back in a secret ending).

I really wanted to like the plot of this game, I really tried. But around every corner was yet another contradiction, and more often than not they come within sentences of each other. It really makes you wonder if anyone actually read the script at all. Take this example for instance:

So the entire game Caius's main goal was to basically turn all of the real world into what Valhalla has become, a place without time or death as they constantly explain it. Ok, that's really cool and honestly well explained by Lightning near the end. (needless to say that's NOT how it ends up happening, I will explain later.) He wants to do this because he protects a character named Yuel who is a forever reincarnating future seer person. Every time the future changes she dies a little inside until eventually dying. Turning the real world into Valhalla, a place without time is a really great idea to keep her from dying all the time. He goes about it in unsavory ways of course, and well, no one really wants the world to turn into purgatory.

Anyway, here's where the facepalm comes in. Serah is bestowed this curse of Yuel at some point in the game and by the end Noel is worried she will die soon. While in Valhalla they kill Caius and Noel asks her if she's had a headache inducing future change vision. She doesn't of course. But WHY is Noel asking this? We are going on this journey for the specific purpose of stopping everywhere from becoming a place with no past or future, he KNOWS she won't see anything anyway. From Valhalla it's said you can see all time past and future anyway. PLUS no one dies here right??? So why is he so worried she'll die there???

IT MAKES NO SENSE! Why are Lightning and Caius fighting in Valhalla anyway? No one can die right? Well they can if it's convenient for plot...

What makes less sense is the end of the game of course. So Caius has the Chaos heart bestowed to the guardian of Yuel from the goddess Etro. To become the new guardian you must slay the current one and are then bestowed with the Chaos heart. At the end Noel does kill Caius....except....he doesn't get the Chaos heart....and Caius somehow is still alive and has the heart presumably in a different time?

Lightning originally explains that Caius's plan is to have Cocoon fall and kill lots of people which causes the unseen gate to open larger so more souls can pass through to Etro. With the gate open wide enough he can unleash Chaos and the curse of Valhalla to the rest of the world which all makes sci fi sense. But then that doesn't end up happening. Hope changes that future saving those who may have died from Cocoon falling. But for NO reason Caius's plan works anyway which happens because Noel stabs and kills him...in an place where there is no death.....? What just happened here?

Then they talk about how the Goddess is dead now because she resided in the chaos heart...a thing she bestows to all new guardians.....Now if this is the last remnant of her because Caius killed her in Valhalla after defeating Lightning, it doesn't make sense because Noel stabs and kills the heart in Caius right? Ok, then how/why does Caius still have the heart in the secret ending later if there's no Etro to bestow it again?

Now I am doing a lot of complaining about the begining and ending, but that's only because that's where ALL the plot lies. The remainder of the story is Noel and Serah constantly wondering if they're on the right path to finding Lightning, and talking about random paradoxes to resolve. The only moment in the game where the story has some measure of characterization is in a dream sequence, and yes, it was quite good. But when you can only pluck one good moment out of a 35 hour game means there's a lot left to be desired.

The worst part about both of these games is they never once stop and give you a moment to give a shit about any of the characters in the game. We never really know their hopes and dreams other than the really lofty ones of "fight for the future!" nonsense. This "love" story of Serah and Snow is somehow more unevolved than Squall and Rinoa from FF8. I didn't think that was possible since that love story was about a guy who doesn't express any emotion and is king of the "..." and a girl that apparently "sees" something in him which is never explained. She also had the hots for Seifer at the start of the game too, so that shows how insightful she is. Still, THIS love story is explained like a George Lucas movie, "I love you, because I love you." Written out like that shockingly has more depth than what is expressed in this game.

So we can't care about Serah, and Noel's goal is the exact same as the villain Caius who both want Yuel to be happy. Noel thinks she'd be happy dying all the time and Caius disagrees. Personally I have to side with Caius. Furthermore, SO DOES YUEL! She tells Noel and Serah to leave Caius the fuck alone at the end of the game. She also says she can't see the future anymore too, so she wasn't seeing the massive failure of the main characters where Caius does unleash his plan successfully at the end. So she's clearly not vested in what happens to the main characters. The only outcome of the main characters not intervening like she suggests, is Caius's success in making sure Yuel doesn't suffer anymore by accomplishing his plan!

WTF!!! Who's side is this bitch on? Why does Noel think he knows what Yuel wants? Is Yuel really trying to save them?

With any of these answers you have definitive contradictions. Noel is clearly trapped in a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario and this isn't explained that way. Yuel is expressing there is a successful path but there absolutely isn't. And that's fine too, that actually makes for interesting writing! The problem here is the writers probably didn't even think about that conundrum when they wrote it. That is just my speculation trying to derive sense out of this mess!

AND WHEN YOU TRY TO DERIVE SENSE OUT OF THE SENSELESS THAT'S WHEN YOU GET FAN-FICTION!

*FF13-2 = Shitty Fan Fiction*

PS - All fan fiction is shitty

OH and I almost forgot! Why does Caius kill the Goddess if he's so concerned with Yuel? The game explains that the Goddess is required for Yuels constant reincarnation! If she's dead how do we get anymore Yuels if they're all FUCKING DEAD??? FUUUCKKK THIS!

Buying a Wii U

Well...it looks like I'm gonna buy a Wii U... Now I know what you're thinking because I'm thinking the exact same thing. WHY

And the answer isn't a good one, the answer isn't even a logical one in my case. My reason for wanting to get a Wii U is to replace my Wii. Some would argue that is actually a sound reason, why repair a broken Wii when you can just wait a bit and get the new system which supports the older games plus we're allowed to transfer our digital games over. Well that logic would function under the conditions that the system being replaced was....well...worth replacing.

I have maybe 25 Wii games in all (more on Virtual Console because let's face it the best games on the Wii were made 15 years ago). Of those 25 games there aren't really that many worth a damn as I mentioned in a previous post. Outside of Mario Galaxy and Metroid there really aren't many good Wii games. So the logic of buying a Wii U as a replacement Wii is already faulty from the start.

But hey, the payoff is owning Nintendo's next generation console right? Right?? Well there's a flaw there too sadly. Ya'see the first problem is within the statement itself "next generation console." Sure remove the word "Nintendo" before it and it makes no sense at all when you analyze what we're actually getting. Because what we're getting isn't "next generation" at all unless it's quantified only in the realm of Nintendo which in THEIR case...yeah...I guess it's an "upgrade." But in the case of REALITY it's simply what we already own now with PS3 and Xbox 360 graphically speaking. Some argue it won't even be on par with those exactly.

Which leads me to a point I made before about how fucking useless the Wii U will end up being. Once again it will lag behind the other 2 graphically which you might argue why is that a problem, I'm no graphics whore! Well that's fine and good neither am I, but the problem is the same one the Wii had where it won't get any ports from the other consoles due to its severe technical limits. I know Nintendo doesn't give a shit, as always they prefer to sell their own software, but there's going to come a time when their consoles can't make money off of Mario's back alone anymore. The age of the gaming mascot being the key to success is no longer a viable option, and hasn't been that way for a couple generations of gaming now.

But here I am on the precipice of my own petard which will surely be my undoing. The mere thought that the Wii U may somehow break this mold that I have shaped for it leads me to purchase the damn thing. Under such false pretenses I will be sitting, mouth agape as the years and months drone on with nary a game to claim the purchase worthy...

Yet still I won't be rocked by this revelation, no. My purchase somehow will remain truthful to my intellectual foibles whom trick my normally sound mind into agreeing that the 6 or 7 good Wii games have been preserved through this new (probably overpriced) device was in fact....a good decision....Explanations for this are lost to me like a fart in the wind if you will with even less obvious traces. Regret will come as quickly as my insertion of such games as Elebits, Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn, and the ever terrible Zelda Skyward Sword. Such games deserve no preservation, no, they deserve an accursed disc drive filled with tiny metal spikes and no laser diode. A disc hell if you will, forever spinning in torturous uncertainty.

In the end though, it will be I suffering in that spinning metallic inferno. Doused with the knowledge and immediate regret that comes with owning a Nintendo product these days I will surely begin doing the obvious gamer's math. Gamer's math is, for those who don't know the equation below:

Stupid Shitty Thing = X number of good video games. Buying the 3DS and 2 shitty games for instance led to my math telling me I missed out on roughly 6 good video games I could have bought with that money.

So clearly what we're making here isn't a logical choice but something more profound, something deeper. A need to preserve the old really, that's what I've figured out. I am a desperate man in need of being able to always play my older games whatever the cost. If I suddenly fancy the whim to pop in Galaga on the Atari, I can. I take solace in this knowledge and I pay gladly for that solace. But it isn't a logical solace...no....and I hate myself for that.

----

For those wondering my Wii sounds like a buzz saw attempting to slice its way through a tank. After a brief time the game freezes and my TV goes batshit with a louder buzz sound of its own. Luckily without a disc in it my Wii still functions.

----

*My friends and I used to have a joke about what would survive a nuclear holocaust? Cockroaches and Nintendo products....oh how the mighty have fallen...*

Too Many Games!! - Blitzkrieg Reviews

It's been quite a while since my Diablo 3 rant and since then Blizzard has patched some of the terrible stuff about the game like they made Inferno relatively playable now. AND they admitted the game has no long term staying power the way it's made at this point. These are all GOOD signs, but thankfully the game isn't fixed yet. I say this because it has allowed me to play other games...many other games. So in a non-traditional event I am going to post my thoughts on those games as briefly as I can.

Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together

There was a time when I bought 4 PSP games for like $30 and this was one of them along with 3rd Birthday which I reviewed earlier. Tactics Ogre I played first assuming it was the longest one of the 4, and that I'd probably like it....Well I was right that it was the LONGEST, but I sure as hell didn't like it. This was one of those games where I couldn't find any redeeming value to it. It was overly long, terrible story, essentially non-existant characters (ie they had zero personality), terrible classes to use, bland graphics, forgettable music, and the most CUMBERSOME menus and equipping I have ever seen in my life.  Basically the class system forced you to buy skills for each character and then equip them, but you only got a limited number of skills to equip at any given time so whenever you had to strategically swap out skills it was a painstakingly extensive process and entirely senseless waste of time. Of the 60 hours it took me to complete this game I'd argue 20 hours were spent mining the menus, equipping, skill buying and equipping, and just general management. Hours and hours were wasted on this very tedious process of ensuring my character's points were spent and skills equipped. I can't tell you how many times I would buy a skill and then move on to the next battle before I realized I did not equip it too and thus didn't  have access to it. Friggin terrible system.

If the plot could have made up for it I would have forgiven a lot of that, but it was a downright snooze-fest. Plus it didn't make any sense. Your main character is trying to save his "sister" who you later find out isn't your sister and she hates you because you didn't pay enough attention to her. SERIOUSLY, she turns to the evil group of the game and LEAVES you because you "care more about the war than her." This made me just want to smack her and sit her ass down to get back in the kitchen, then I realized she's supposed to be my fucking SISTER and not wife....lol. Never the less I could not get behind any character's motivations in this game. The main character finds out she isn't his sister after a while but STILL she is used as an effective bargaining chip to be used to draw him out anyway. He still wants to save her even though she clearly backstabbed him and left! There's a way to cause a bad ending where she commits suicide after you confront her. And NOT because she admits she's WRONG either, but because she is STILL butthurt that you "don't pay attention to her..." Even though your ENTIRE quest is to get her back and SAVE her after she leaves you. Yeah I'm not thinking about YOU at all. Get shit on, honestly.

Jeanne D'arc

This being my 3rd PSP game in my 4 game purchase I have been off and on with this game for a LONG time. At first I was enjoying it quite a bit. For a strategy RPG there isn't much team management, or skill buying and grinding. It is very self contained and flows rather well. It definitely does a much better job at trying to be a fun game compared to Tactics Ogre. On those merits alone it's a better game. But it goes beyond that too. The game clearly gives a shit about its story and actually bothers to have MANY animated cut-scenes throughout the game unlike Tactics which had none. Sadly, the game's story is a mess. It's loosely based off of Joan of Arc who was a religious nutbag who thought god was telling her to lead an army to save France. A similar premise is seen here in this game where your main character thinks she hears the voice of god and uses this high and mighty stance to march armies into the fray. They never really question her either, and for the most part blindly follow her even though she's a total bitch. At one point in the game Jeanne is removed from the party and her best friend takes up the role and pretends to hear voices too. She turns out to be even MORE of a bitch and far less of a tactician eventually getting caught and burned to death. This is SUPPOSED to be a sad scene but I was like, good, burn you stupid bitch. 

The game never writes any of the characters in a likeable way. They are very detached from the overall harm they cause or they are blank slates like the male lead who quite literally lost his memory. So you find yourself rooting for them ONLY because the opposition is clearly evil as they are demons and  the undead. But otherwise these people are deluded morons. My other major complaint are the villains. The bulk of the people you fight are overly recurring opponents. By that I mean the game shows you killing the same characters after every encounter yet they still pursue you. It has this very Team Rocket (pokemon) feel to it after a while. Like, oh I just saw you get stabbed, commit suicide, executed by your own allies and oh? What's that you're fighting me again now? Hooooooow? The game never makes it a point to show these guys get resurrected, or say they are magical in some way because they aren't. The major offender here is this Knight named Talbot? I think it's Talbot....anyway you kill him roughly 10 times and he never dies...in fact he ends up helping you just before the final mission like the tool he is.

To cut this short, I'm ultimately glad I never have to play the game ever again.

Street Fighter x Tekken

A big stink swirls over this game, and that being the DLC characters are already on the disc and Capcom is going to charge us $20 to unlock them. This has caused a HUGE backlash over the game to such a point the fighting game community really actively hates this game. I am presently watching EVO the annual Superbowl of fighting games that spans 3 streams and hundreds of people in attendance and not ONE stream is covering the newest fighting game, Street Fighter x Tekken. But it's not completely because of this Capcom betrayal, but also because it's seen as an inferior game in general. And yeah it has issues. You can block stun opponents off of continues jabs which is annoying as fuck, the timer runs out more often than not because super moves eat up too much time and other various reasons, the gem system is pretty useless as is pandora mode, tatsus are + a billion on block which means they can be used for an automatic "get in" tool without any real punishment. There are cheap loops in the game, and initially there were some infinite combos but both of these are or will be patched out. 

For me personally I enjoyed the game a lot. I loved the tagging system and the creativity that can be created off of it with the juggle system, and I especially love that Vega is a good character in this game FINALLY. At a casual level I feel the game is quite enjoyable, plus I am not butthurt by Capcom's choice to lock content on the disc. For me...what's the fucking difference if a company makes DLC and isn't on the disc but got completed before release anyway and sells it, or a company puts in on the disc and locks it away and charges you for it? For the consumer in one instance you are downloading a large file and in Capcom's method you are downloading a small file...that's really the major difference. Big whoop, quit bitching. A company is going to charge you for DLC whether you like it or not no matter the delivery method. I prefer this to buying a new disc. $20 for more content as opposed to the $40 Super Street Fighter was, or the $40 Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 was.

Still, SFxTekken is quite a good fighting game, and Capcom is working on fixing things the fighting game community has been complaining about. Is it too little too late? Probably. Will the game pick up again after the new characters release? Doubtful. But I'll still enjoy it.

Fallout New Vegas: 

 I FINALLY got around to finishing this game. It's not too shabby and I prefer the Fallout games over the Elder Scroll games just on combat alone being better in the Fallout games. Fallout New Vegas is basically the same as Fallout 3. The major difference to me is New Vegas offers A LOT more choices in how you go about the quests. There are multiple ways to complete everything and then multiple ways to complete those multiple ways....It's a double-edged sword in a way...on the one hand the freedom is nice but on the other you have trouble figuring out your consequences or who's evil and who's good....or rather who the GAME thinks is evil and who the GAME thinks is good. Since the game revolves around moral choice like the previous game, you set out to either pick evil options or good ones. The problem with this game is those choices are not so obvious. They aren't so obvious because the game is very faction oriented. There are like 4 different factions of people in New Vegas plus the guy that hired you to do stuff Mr. House. My initial impression of Mr. House was that he is an evil guy, so that was the motivation for many of my choices. Of the 4 factions most of them seemed evil too so I had mixed choices on helping them or wiping them out. Ultimately I ended up making mostly evil choices on accident in an attempt to be good.

This was quite annoying to say the least. On the plus side the DLC for New Vegas is meaty and pretty good. I'd say New Vegas has better DLC than Fallout 3, but my overall thoughts on New Vegas is that the whole game is DLC to Fallout 3, lol.

Penny Arcade Episode 1, 2, 3: 

Penny Arcade Episode 3 recently came out and I didn't play the first 2 yet, so I plowed through all three in a week. There isn't a whole to say on these games but I will say Episode 3 is WORLDS better than the first two. The first 2 are done in 3D graphics with a point and click movement. The coding on the games is shoddy at best, there's a lot of lag time between searching loot in chests and then being able to move again, the battle system is point and click based which is irritating too. The enemies can often get in each others way and you can't click on what enemy you want, the super attacks aren't fun to do since they're a mini game...The story isn't well told in the first two games either plus they aren't very funny.

The third game does everything right by comparison. The battle system is VERY interesting and strategic with a super fun class system. The plot is much better told and many moments had me pausing the game in laughter. Though the graphics are only 16-bit style the game has way more charm and fun than the first two combined. I can't wait for episode 4 from these guys.

The Darkness II: 

Played this a little while back. The new art style jogged me at first but after a while it fit the game better than the first. The plot was better since it centered around a central villain with pretty clear goals in mind. The gameplay was better too and there were many more fun ways to dispatch enemies. The game also features defined boss battles which the first game lacked. It's only real flaw is the game is like 4 hours long. But not much to bitch about here, quite a fun ride, I highly recommend it.

Saints Row 3: 

I can't remember if I actually wrote a review of this game because I talk about it so much. It is quite literally the best game I've played in a LONG time. Normally I am not a fan of open world city games ala Grand Theft Auto because the gameplay is usually garbage and the enemies aren't any fun because they're just normal people. Saints Row 3 adds mutants and other oddities to fight making combat more interesting. It also helps that the 3rd person shooter gunplay of the game is the most effective I have ever seen. What sets this game apart mostly though is the writing is bar none the funniest I have ever seen in a video game. There were so many moments I was dying of laughter playing this game I can't count nor recall them all. Every bit of this game spoke to me as a human being though. From the wrestling references, to video game references to the clear digs on action movies and even B Space Opera movies this game has it all. Just when you think they can't push the envelope anymore, they do, and then they do it again. My first thoughts of Saints Row was a GTA knockoff, but frankly, Saints Row is what GTA wishes it could be, and that's fun. Realism does not a fun game make in my opinion, that is why they are video games. And NO game in my opinion recognizes that it is in fact a video game better than does Saints Row 3.

 Deus Ex Human Revolution: 

This game...sucked. It doesn't do anything particularly well. It doesn't have great combat, or good stealth, or a good plot. It's all very....meh. Add to that being forced into countless computer hackings made the game lag on way longer than it needed or deserved.

Alan Wake: 

I briefly brought up this game in my Linearity defense article, but suffice to say this is a very good game. It conveys a very fun plot with entertaining characters. The atmosphere and sense of urgency is presented perfectly as well. The only minor complaints is it can be rather formulaic at times with each chapter presenting you a reason or excuse that Alan is traversing around at night which bugged me. Every chapter I kept wanting to tell Alan STAY PUT, WAIT TILL MORNING DIPSHIT! But no...he'd rather do everything at night....when there's evil. Whatever....

No More Heroes (PS3)

I played this game twice through almost immediately. It is a very good game filled with fun characters, interesting combat, and hilarious self referential humor. It's only major flaw is the PS3 port is GOD awful. Long ass loading times (even while saving) jittery glitchy overworld, and periods of non-responsiveness during battle. If a battle gets too intense the game literally stops reading your inputs. Do mission 20 and you see what I'm talking about in all its glory. Otherwise it's quite a good game.

Resistance 3

Good game, still not better than 1 but better than 2. More fleshed out plot than 2 which is what makes it better, also they brought back the health pack system which is a plus. They also let you carry more than 2 guns another plus. They fixed the issues of 2 essentially. Major flaw in the game is local co-op though which is how I went through the game. The AI turns retarded on local co-op not shooting at you, staying still, and generally not doing anything at all which isn't the case when you play single player. Also the multiplayer was pretty fun too from what I played.  

Conclusions: 

There are a couple more games I've gone through recently but they aren't that note-able plus I'm getting tired of typing, lol. But even after all those games I still have SOOO many more left to go through it's ridiculous.

*Fingers hurt now...*

Get your Warcraft out of my Diablo - Review

So Diablo 3 finally came out after a decade of waiting. What would be in store for us, what awaited around the corner we wondered. Well wonder we didn't really have to. If you'd been following the development of the game over the last 5 years or so you'd know that the team handling it were the same group that made World of Warcraft. With that knowledge in mind you already know what to expect and that is a really boring ass game. But what did we actually get? A boring ass game of course!

Story:


The story in Diablo was never one to email home about, but Diablo 2 anyway had really amazing cutscenes a clear sense of dread, and a certain mystery and wonderment about the brief scenes played out between Marius and the Wanderer. In no instance do we get those moments of character intrigue for Diablo 3 sadly. We're supposed to care about Dekkard Cain's relative but she comes off as nothing more than a damsel in distress. She has no backbone to her and rolls with the punches. We don't root for or against her like every other character in the game...except Tyrael.

For me I rooted against Tyrael since he was a shadow of his awesomeness in Diablo 2. They made him mortal...and they made him a black guy for absolutely no other reason than to fill a minority quota. Seriously, go back and play Diablo 2 that was NOT a black guy voice in the slightest and this has nothing to do with race at all either this is about character consistency. Nothing annoys me more than when a character is completely wrong or changed between shows, or games or whatever. It throws me off completely and bugs the shit out of me. It's just like how Marvel made a black Spiderman and actually this annoyance has less to do with the "change" in character so to speak as much as it has to do with the fact that it totally takes away from the uniqueness of the Spiderman accident itself thus diminishing the character. Oh, so just everyone can be Spiderman now eh? To quote The Incredibles "If everyone was super, no one would be." I also hate She Hulk in the exact same way I hate the black Spiderman idea. Both are just cash grabs to get a certain minority interested in their product and aren't there for the sake of story. These characters are made to take the easy way out and that's it. These "creatives" take an established idea and insert a different gender or race instead of actually making a new character. Good examples would be Wonder Woman, or Static Shock where they are clearly characters of their own and can be liked or disliked on their own merits rather than on the comparison of their origin counterpart.

It's these types of lifeless decisions that pander on throughout the game. I could have been swayed to like the  new Tyrael had he been interesting too. But no, he was all JUSTICE prevails all blargh blargh. That was nothing like the Tyrael of the first game who was there to be just a guide for the humans in their plight.

But it's more than that, there's no sense of urgency to the quest. It never feels like the evil in the game is building to anything at all. You reach the final chapter and BOOM Diablo starts fucking with the Angles taking over their realm. In Dibalo 2 you had a constant sense of urgency since you were always trying to catch up to Marius and the Wanderer. The game gives you that "just missed em'" sense while playing and it keeps you going. There is an immense build up of impending evil through the Wanderer and through Marius's depiction of the Wanderer slowly becoming Diablo and once that clock finished all hell would break loose! Diablo 3 did none of this at all. It was haphazardly thrown together and the acts don't even feel connected. I'm very scared to see how much worse the expansion can potentially be.

Gameplay: 


You never know what you're missing until it's gone, and that's the case with Diablo 3. Here is where WoW seeps into the game. Here is where it stops being a Diablo game where you can spam skills and go nuts like a good action game lets you and instead bars you from that frenetic gameplay forcing upon you the dreaded COOLDOWN!! Yes...everything in this game has a cooldown factor that is so irritating and unpleasant the fun is just lost on the game. I chose to use a Barbarian who has no less than 3 skills with a TWO minute cooldown! One of them is just summoning shitty barbarian familiars that only last 15 seconds and don't do shit. This would be like in Diablo 2 if the Necromancer could only summon a golem once every 2 minutes and then it dies immediately. Hell leap attack has a friggin cooldown. Everything has a cooldown and it's NOT fun.

There's cooldown to teleport for god sakes! 90% of all the fun I had in Diablo 2 was teleporting around Act 3 to quickly get to Mephisto to kill him. Can't do that anymore. Not to mention no move was as fun to do as Frozen Orb in Diablo 2 and there is no comparable move in Diablo 3. Whirlwind thankfully doesn't have a cooldown, but it's terrible. It's downright useless.

This is exactly how WoW is played but here's the thing....Diablo is a single player game where you are allowed to travel in parties to play if need be. WoW had cooldown in skills so team synergy plays a more vital role. Putting imposing cooldown in a single player game causes hefty imbalances and very unfun situations. Take for instance the idea that since the Barb nor the Monk can spam their best abilities, if they cannot assail tough monsters in that one burst where they CAN use their shit, then they have to run away and kite monsters. This is NOT how a melee class should operate. Diablo 2 got around this by allowing the melee classes full range of their abilities and gave priority to life leech options that only the melee class could take full advantage of allowing them to stay in a fight and tank the way they're supposed to. As it stands now in Diablo 3, melee classes are completely useless.

The other major problem with the game is the item drop mechanics. Diablo 2 was addictive due to being able to spam magic find and hunt specific enemies for loot. Diablo 3 fails in this regard in every way. Firstly, legendary items are garbage. There is no reason to want a Grandfather sword or Windforce bow anymore. There's no "items" to aspire to getting. The only thing you are interested in seeing are Yellow items with high DPS. So items are no longer interesting, they are nameless and thus not any fun to treasure grind for. No longer can you get excited seeing a Soj ring, but instead you hope to see an item that has XXX # of DPS.

The final issues I take is of personal preference. First attaining the max level is too easy in this game. It was much more enjoyable in Diablo 2 to basically never get to the max level. When you're treasure hunting far too often you'd go 20 hours with nothing to show for it except maybe you got another level. So you GOT something out of it, it didn't feel like your time was wasted. In Diablo 3 you can go that same 20 hours with literally nothing to show for it.

I also dislike in Diablo 3 that you can't pick skills. There are no builds anymore, you're just a set of numbers now defined by your gear. And none of this is helped by the addition of the auction house which is another clear cash grab. Not only does it further reduce the uniqueness of items and builds it pits all items found in the game into one centralized location dashing fun experiences in Diablo 2 you'd get such as having the Cow King drop a Grandfather sword and everyone gathering around to take a look at it on the trade screen if said person who picked it up allowed a viewing (which they always did). These are memorable moments the auction house can never produce.

There is one bright shining spot in the gameplay of Diablo 3. Item drops are now specific per character so no more mad dashes after a boss dies to gather up all the items. This is really the best addition to the Diablo series ever, sadly marred by all the other poor choices.

Sound:


Overall the music is better than Diablo 2 but the sound effects aren't. My major complaint here is the utter lack of the Barbarian's "HURRR" noise during a leap. Miss that soooo much.

Graphics: 


It looks like WoW and that isn't a compliment.

Conclusion: 


Through patches much of these issues can be addressed and Blizzard has spoken on the issues with melee characters and the shittyness of Legendary items so there is hope for the game. As it stands now though I can't be bothered to keep playing it.

*HURR HURR HURR - Barbarian, Diablo 2 Never stops being funny.*

In Defense of Linearity

I'm really not sure why I have to speak on this subject of linearity in gaming, but there seems to some major confusion in the gaming community about linear games. It SEEMS that there are people out there who think that all games should be free roam, even ones designed as linear games.

What do I mean by this you ask? Well after having completed Alan Wake on the PC and enjoying it tremendously I had to clear up a few questions regarding the plot so I swung over to gamefaqs for some plot synopsis. Catching my eye, however, were user reviews and a few of the top ones being quite low. The main complaint of these reviews you ask? You guessed it, the game is too linear! Ok...so what I ask. Clearly the developers made a game with the intention of guiding the player along a path with a story to tell. What's wrong with that? Games have been doing that since Super Mario Brothers. I never heard anyone complain that Mario was too linear.

So apparently people want more freedom in their games, and you know, that's fine by me. But don't play a game that is clearly NOT a free roam game and then complain that it wasn't a free roam game. It's as if people don't understand that there are linear games in general.

What's wrong with a linear game anyway? Personally, I prefer linear games and I wouldn't scoff at a free roam game because it wasn't linear either. Linear games have distinct traits that defiantly outshine free roam games by a mile:

1. Better Stories:
         Linear games by far have the best plots. Take the most basic example of Final Fantasy vs Elder Scrolls. Both are RPG's but Final Fantasy always tends to have better stories and this isn't just opinion either. Basing my logic on the basic structure of storytelling open world games lose out on one major front and that's pacing. A linear game can convey a plot and characters with a keen sense of timing and purpose that is severely lacking in open world games. Think of it this way. Start reading a book, and in the middle of a chapter go out to your local library, pick up an encyclopedia and start reading about dinosaurs. This is the equivalent of an open world game starting you on a quest and you get sidetracked by another random quest that has you research a large monster of some kind. Suddenly you are immediately whisked away from the main plot, character development, and the sense of urgency never formulates. These are all key facets of storytelling that is utterly lost on free roam games. Take a guess why Alan Wake wasn't a free roam game...

2. Better Characters:
       Much in the same way linear games deliver better stories, they deliver better characters too. A linear game allows the director to make the player listen to characters problems and develop them more. You learn to like or hate them rather than dialoge box skipping over everything in a free roam game. Not to mention the characters are often with you on your journey rather than passer-byers in a free roam game where the player cannot be tied down. Further, in a free roam game you are always some user created character with zero personality which also makes characters around you just as hollow since their interactions with you are played out normally with the players "good" or "bad" choices and subsequently offer very little depth for everyone involved.

3. Boredom doesn't kick in as quickly:
      This is more personal taste or how well the game is done in general. But if I were to be forced to play more Skyrim combat than say Devil May Cry or Lollipop Chainsaw I'd go friggin nuts. Open world games rarely have fun gameplay, Saints Row 3 being one of the few exceptions for me. I'd much rather have a game with a small room where it required some kind of twitch based skill combat where winning and losing is based on how well I'm doing as opposed to say Fallout New Vegas's free roam accidentally running into a Deathclaw right at the start with no way of winning. With better gameplay boredom doesn't kick in as fast. While you may have the freedom to go wherever you want after a while the magic of freedom gets marred by the repetitious tasks / combat you're given.

4. Most Games are Linear:
     While this isn't exactly a compliment to linear games what it says though is that if you are a gamer there is a heavy chance you've played more linear games in your lifetime than non-linear games. Though that doesn't speak to quality either, what that is also saying is the odds are very high you became a gamer based off of linear gameplay experiences.

Really though, the point of all this is the next time you play a game that isn't free roam and you expected it to be, don't blame the game because you were too stupid to know what kind of game you bought!

*((real life dumbass moment from me)) "Hmm...I'd like to get an easier game because I can never beat any game I have now." Sees Ninja Gaiden 2 NES. "Huh, a ninja game that can't be too hard." Blatantly overlooks the large "Hard To Beat" sticker on the box...*

E3 2012 Predictions

Not to undo tradition I will post my brief thoughts on what may occur this year at E3 with a minor update to follow on my thoughts after it's over.

Nintendo:

They already released their pre-E3 video so I'm kind of cheating here. Nintendo will almost solely focus on the Wii U and how it connects families and bullshit. They'll talk about how it's a unique experience nothing like we've ever had before yadda yadda... Last time they promised us this we got a Zelda game we could flail to a Mario game we could flail to and countless other games that would have been better minus flailing. Now we have a system with a controller that still flails and has a screen on it. I'm guessing this will cause even more untold damage when kids fling it across the room.

Some may ask where's you're unbridled Nintendo fanboy optimism? I'll tell you it's in my rather empty game chest drawer that was supposed to be for Wii games. I have about as many Wii games as I do PS2 games which for me is less than 20 (of course being a Nintendo fanboy during that era I accumulated over 50 Gamecube games). Maybe for the normal gamer 20 or so is acceptable for a system. All right fine I'll jive with that logic for the moment even though that's not my personal view. But also consider of those 20 games a few were experimental games just to better understand how the Wii's controller functioned such as Call of Duty 3, Elebits, Dragon Ball Z, and a few others. All told I have about 6 or 7 games that I bought mainly just to see how the genre reacts to the Wii-mote giving little regard to the quality of the game itself. So nearly half of my collection is a constant reminder that "oh yeah, this shit didn't work well on the Wii either." And then there are a scant few games that should have been good but sucked anyway somehow like Fire Emblem and Zelda Skyward Sword. Of the games that don't blow absolute chunks I still regret not being able to play them in an "un-unique way" ie a regular controller. So did 6 or so great games justify a $250 system? No...they don't.

Bearing all this in mind my hopes for the Wii U are very minimal at best. The system specs alone on the unit leave much to be desired and knowing the other two companies are going to blow it out of the water graphically speaking once again, we can surely expect developers to ignore the Wii U. Why go through the efforts of making a lesser version of a game just for the Wii U? Also consider the Wii was something of a flash in the pan item everyone bought like it was an iPod or something. Can you honestly expect people to do this again as their Wii Fit boards collect more dust? Of course not. What is the incentive, a controller with a screen on it? People have iPads now and smartphones why buy a game console where games cost upwards of $50 each just to play something your iPad most likely does now anyway for .99 per game? They demoed throwing a ninja star from the Wii Pad to the TV like it's some amazing thing yet there are countless iPad games where you can flick shit on the screen. Also the Wii Pad uses the shitty touch screen the 3DS and DS uses not the really good iPad  or Vita screen. I only compare the two because they are the same audiences. The people that bought the Wii were looking for a less expensive alternative to quick interactive entertainment at the time and the Wii fit that demographic. With the advent of smartphones, they don't anymore.

So they are still pandering to a demographic that ignores them now and are losing the support of people that just want another Donkey Kong or Mario game and not more Mii games. What does all this mean for E3? Well just what I said, they're going to be pandering to a crowd that won't be listening. This will be like the "soccer mom" E3 debacle before they shifted gears and tried to win back the gamer crowd. Why they are reverting probably is reflected in their ever decreasing bottom line. They are reactive to the market and trying to win back the people that made the Wii initially successful. Sadly, I'm not in that crowd...

Sony:

They will most likely try to push the Vita and lie about sales numbers. The Vita is doing about as well as sales of bulk energy bars at Costco. This is sad because it's a really good piece of technology. It definitely caters to the hardcore crowd desperate for a handheld console that has buttons and joysticks but at the same time offers other input options like touchscreen and rear tocuhscreen which is still retarded. Never the less it hasn't done well with a poor lineup of games and nothing much to look forward to. The 3DS had a similar road when it began but upticked with Mario Kart and Mario Land 3D. Sony needs that for the Vita but time may be running out for it. Resistance was supposed to help spur sales but it ended up being a rushed sack of garbage. Hopefully Sony will give good reasons to own the Vita at E3.

I also predict Sony will finally stop mentioning the Move, (I hope). If they even bring it up one time I'll shoot a baby kitten. There will be blood on your hands Sony!

Aside from that they'll tout sales numbers as usual and hopefully have a great E3 show like last year keeping Move to a minimum and game release information at the forefront with a large swath of trailers.

Microsoft:

As much as I don't bother with Microshit they COULD likely have the most interesting E3 of all if they pull a rabbit out of the hat and show off the new Xbox. It is NOT very likely though seeing as they will probably push the Kinect more along with Halo 4 and the new Gears of War game. All of which will be on the 360 so why divert attention. They might...MIGHT mention their new system in passing but I doubt we'll see it sadly. Chances are we'll see new games, perhaps some new apps, maybe a new Xbox live subscription options with more stuff included. Hard to tell since I don't follow them much, lol.

**UPDATE**

Well looks like I was largely correct about most of my E3 predictions. Nintendo ignored the 3DS mostly and spoke of family and gathering around the Wii U and didn't really hard sell anyone on the idea the Wii U will be a capable gaming device. Sony repeated their last year successful conference with many unique game offerings and new IP's along with old staples like God of War. They also didn't talk about the Move much apart from their new Wonderbook game idea. What I got wrong here was the Vita, they ignored that more than the Move! That is NOT a good sign. Microsoft was the worst of all as all they talked about was a new Gears and new Halo rounded out with Smartglass that will see about as much support as Vita crossplay in the end, and .... an Usher dance number....ugh...

Overall the real winner of E3 was....Ubisoft! They were a large force in ALL 3 conferences showing off Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed 3, a new Rayman, new Splinter Cell, and a bunch of other great looking games. Regrettably they had the worst host of all time for their own show and by far the most awkward presentations I've seen at E3 since Nintendo's soccer mom or drummer boy.

Biggest disappointment was Microsoft not talking about a new system. The console cycle is reaching its end and now was the time to let gamers froth at the mouth over new tech. We all knew Sony wasn't going to jump the gun on it but Microsoft could have. Either they don't want to show their hand to the ever copy-cat Sony (cough, Move, cough Playstation Smash Brothers), or they really didn't have anything tangible to show, or they didn't want to direct attention away from the Xbox 360 yet. Any of these reasons are good ones I guess, but console reveals are usually 1 year out before they are released and rumor has it Microsoft is planning to launch their new system next year soooo....let's see it!

Apart from enhanced graphics I really want to see a revolution in game distribution. The Vita has somewhat begun this where nearly all new Vita releases are also available for download. Cut the middle man out, cut development costs, cut costs of gaming, go digital! For those without internet though I can see that being an issue. But something tells me if you can splurge on a gaming device the chances are good you have internet too.

Call of Duty: What is the Difference?

Over the weekend I decided to play the newest Medal of Honor and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 single player campaigns. After about ten hours of this I began to forget which game I was playing honestly. Each game has waves of enemies coming at you, and you mow them down with advanced assault rifles and what-not. Each game lets you be a sniper for a bit, lets you bomb raid stuff, and lets you hooah your way through awful plots and faceless characters. The only way I could really tell I wasn't playing Modern Warfare 3 was the ability to power slide in Medal of Honor, which to me makes it the better game automatically because I can do something fun like power sliding rather than nothing interesting in MW3.

But is this really ALL I can say about the differences between these two games? On a single player account, yeah pretty much. You can argue the levels in MW3 were a BIT more interesting and had better set pieces, but in the end they still all blur together in a bloody mesh of shooting things for hours on end. The only real differences come in the multiplayer...right? Well it's supposed to be different...right? Or did Medal of Honor just copy-paste Call of Duty online with the level up system and the....yeah they did....right down to that little white x that appears if you score a hit on the enemy. I can BARELY discern the difference between these two games when watching online matches apart from looking at the HUD. Don't even get me started trying to tell the difference between MW2 and MW3.

I only bring up Medal of Honor as my first example of how all of these games are exactly the same because it's made by a completely different developer and team, you would THINK it would be a different game! What angers me about all of this isn't just that these are obviously all the same games since Call of Duty 4, it's that fans of the series actually have opinions on which is the best or worst, or Battlefield 3 is godlike and MW3 is trash, Medal of Honor is awful!, blah blah. But really play these games, think about the mechanics of what is happening, think about what you are ultimately doing here, what is the difference if you get +100 for killing a guy in MW3 as opposed to getting +100 in Battlefield 3? And yeah, I can tell that some guns that were once really good in MW2 or Black Ops got better or worse in MW3, or this or that gun is overpowered and should be patched. Or how we all complain that it's really stupid people who played longer get all the good weapons unlocked and those who don't play much struggle with the shitty weapons.

How is this a measure of which game is ass and which is good though? Look at what we're comparing, weapons or rather firearms. All of them shoot bullets but some shoot them better than others...ok? So what? It's not like MW2 offers a distinctive difference in strategy just because it had a better P-90 than MW3 does (I do not claim this is accurate, just saying) sooooo you just use something else in MW3 that works with equal efficiency right? You're not really DOING anything different, you are still pointing and shooting trying to kill stuff fast and stay alive.

This isn't like a fighting game where each character has fundamental differences in how they can and should be played and how each game has to be approached with different strategies depending on your opponent. In these shooting games you can take one approach to everything all the time and still be successful at it, but in a fighting game if you play Vega like how you should play Ryu, ie trying to cross-up the opponent then you will fail consistently every time since Vega can't cross-up at all. And what is amusing even more-so here is you can't play, Vega for instance, the same across each iteration of Street Fighter. If you played Street Fighter 2 Vega the same as Street Fighter 4 Vega or even Alpha 3 Vega, you will never be successful with him. But hey, you can pick the P-90 in any Call of Duty game and still kill shit...

Now I don't consider myself a first person shooter aficionado like I do with fighting games by any means, but I am an avid video game player and I can often gauge the differences in games very quickly. I can play Resistance 3 online and tell you without hesitation that it is a pretty different experience to playing any of the Call of Duties even though they gave it the exact same RPG elements. Despite this the weapons are more unique and different than just the run of the mill point and shoot, and unlike Call of Duties you can actually base strategies around using some of these weapons and perks whether you are using them or combating people with them. Does this make it a better game you ask? Well it makes it a unique game and that's saying something. I can actually tell when I'm playing that game and when I'm playing something else.

I grew up on Doom, Goldeney, Turok, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters and so on. Each of those games were unique and offered something the other didn't. Opinions on which was worse or better actually made sense and weren't the rhetoric of gibbering fanboys. Even Halo was a welcome step up from those games offering unique gameplay elements and sticky grenade based strategies. But how did we as gamers in this generation of gaming, the one with the most potential being the online generation become so stagnant in the FPS genre? What happened? Why did it become so unabashedly cookie cutter?

I don't claim fans of the series to be stupid either. I assume most of them know that these games are basically the same every year and only the younger ones will crow about how x game is better than x game mainly due to the subconscious fact that their parents could only afford the one they think is best and they can't buy the newer one themselves so they defend the one they have to find some measure of self worth...? That may be too deep, but it's not uncommon for game companies to get away with this. Madden hasn't changed much for a decade and it does obscenely well still and it isn't  because gamers aren't aware they are getting ripped off, they know they are buying the same game every year because they like it. That is fine too, I'd buy Mega Man through 100 if they made that many, but after a while I wouldn't be able to tell you that Mega Man 31 was better than Mega Man 43. Hell, I still don't get the argument that Mega Man 6 wasn't any good but people love Mega Man 2 despite it not having charge shot, slide, and the awesome jetpack attachment of Mega Man 6.

But there may be some hope yet for the FPS genre, maybe. Black Ops 2 actually looks interesting to me mainly because they changed the setting quite a bit and it appears they added some different gameplay elements. Maybe it will be the Perfect Dark of today we have been missing. Maybe the weapons will be more interesting than quantifying them by their damage per second or the noises they make. Hey, the first Black Ops gave us a leaping prone ability that was fun as hell, hopefully they'll expand that uniqueness to other elements of the game.

*Call of Duty taught me people are only worth 100 points.*

3rd Birthday - The Matrix meets Kill Bill

The 3rd Birthday is the third Parasite Eve game. Even though I have never really played the first two games I can safely say the addition of "birthday" in the title makes about as much sense as the game's plot...which is none of course. Luckily Square hasn't lost their touch when coming up with amusing gameplay mechanics that make for a surprisingly fun and fast paced 3rd person shooter on the PSP.

Also, as far as I can tell this game has basically nothing to do with the first 2 Parasite Eve games. Even though I didn't play them I am aware that they dealt with viruses or parasites and the like which caused monsters whereas this game deals with spirits and spontaneous monster evolution.

Graphics:

Square as always manages to make everything pretty. This is one of the best looking PSP games I've ever seen. The character models are highly detailed, as are the monsters. The cutscenes are fantastic and plentiful too. The only minor gripe is the scenery is lacking in scope. It is all long corridors and that's about it. Just not much to look at really.

Gameplay:

Parasite Eve 3 Birthday plays out as a 3rd person shooter which on the PSP is normally a headache no matter how well it's done. Square decided to prove us wrong though and made one that isn't a headache. Instead of being allowed to direct your shots you lock on to everything, which is great actually. Also your guns have specific ranges so you do have to get within arms reach of your nasty foes more often than not. Luckily Square implemented a dodge system and the ability for our hero Aya to spirit swap to other people giving her another escape option.

These dodge options are great and really make the game feel not cheap when you get hit. Aside from a bad camera now and then the game feels very skill based and you have to plan your resources. You get a meter that builds as you play allowing you to go super Aya and deal significant damage. It is best to hold onto this power and unleash it when necessary. Her grenades are also something you have to conserve but always unleash too. Sometimes having that 1 extra grenade can mean the difference in a big boss battle.

The boss battles are also a lot of fun and they sometimes offer different gameplay mechanics to fight them, like one out of a helicopter and one you fight while perpetually falling and body swapping.

The only aspects of the gameplay that were mediocre was the level up systems and equipment. The skill spheres that you can equip in the game never really made any sense to me. I kinda understood that matching colors allowed them to level up...and having them together let them connect but I didn't understand what that meant or how it affected anything at all. Also, it never seemed beneficial to swap out a level 7 skill for instance, for something new that was at level 1. So it felt like once you made your bed with how you were going to format your skill grid that's it, you're stuck with it.

The equipment I nitpick because it felt like there weren't enough choices. Oh, it LOOKED like there were enough choices in weapons, but they never unlocked. I had no idea why or what I was doing wrong but most of the weapons for me never unlocked for use. I literally stuck with the same few weapons through the whole game...(all 5 hours of it).

And that brings me to my final gripe about the game, it is really short. That is ok for me since I just got through two games that were 50 hours each and they both kinda sucked. 5 hours of decent fun is better that slogging through a 50 hour game that makes me want to pluck out my ass hair. But it is still a gripe given that it is only 5 hours long, and that counts the pretty long cut scenes the game has. Just saying it is slightly better that it is a good 5 hours, and 5 levels too.

Story:

The story in this game is a total mess. It's good that it doesn't reference the first two games if you've never played them but really it probably would have made more sense. You play as Aya the sexy memory deprived vixen of the previous games who is locked away in her "cell" for whatever reason even though she is employed by a special defense organization. So as a prisoner...err employee of this group you are tasked with traveling back in time to correct the past and eradicate the monsters that came about 2 years ago for unknown reasons.

Aya has a special ability that allows her to soul jump to other people and this defense group built a machine that lets her travel to the past. And just like the Matrix if you die in the machine you die in real life....oooooooooooh!!! Basically the game plays out from there as you try and destroy the monster's hideouts and major bases.

Throughout the game Aya slowly gets her memories back and this is where the story stops making sense. Aya remembers that she got married and a SWAT team comes in to gun her down and everyone else. They do indeed kill everyone but Aya remembers that for some reason in her dying moments she picked up a gun and shot her sister. I'll get to that later.

Anyway the story falls apart since the onset of the plot revolves around the very moment the SWAT team kills everyone. It falls apart because they never...EVER explain why the SWAT team was there to kill them. I swear the guy who wrote this saw Kill Bill, loved the imagery of a dying bride and went with it without having any real plot ideas. So what happens is they get shot up except for the sister who somehow discovers she has a soul transferring power and in an effort to save Aya transfers into her. This causes the sister's body to collapse and die being without a soul and Aya sees this happen which is why in her memory she thought she shot her. Instead she kills off the SWAT team with the gun and ends up surviving.

What she wasn't aware of is that she was no longer Aya but her sister who died not having a soul, and Aya's soul was destroyed in the process of the transfer. For no reason at all this event also caused the rise of the two major monster types...again...for no reason at all. So the villain through it all was trying to find the starting point to the monsters and replicate the process through him so he could become a higher being even though none of this stacks up scientifically where you could somehow repeat the process.

Still, the soul transfer killed Aya right? So why doesn't it kill any of the military guys you inhabit while playing the game? It SHOULD! What of the SWAT team? And don't get me started with the time travel plot holes. Also if a soul transfer is what birthed the monsters....why does it never spawn any more monsters while playing the game? You soul transfer ALL the time!

Sound:

Good music, good sound effects, decent voice acting. The major issue here is Aya! OMG stop making out of breath noises and gasping! I swear her script read like this during a cutscene: "Ah, ehh, oooh, eeee, heea, aaaaaaahh, urrrr." On and on! She makes these sounds at unnecessary moments too. Like she bends over to pick up a gun "eehh!" Or turns a corner to point a gun at something "gasp!" Shut the fuck up!

Conclusion:

The story didn't make any damn sense but it was an entertaining ride all the same. The characters at least seemed to know what was going on so that was good enough for me I guess. This is probably the best 3rd person shooter I played on the PSP, but thank god I have a Vita now and I won't have to put up with gimped gameplay ideas for lack of a second stick!

*Yeah I bought the game because Aya is hot...sue me.*

Nintendo 3DS vs Playstation Vita

Yes, I am one of those rare people that has both a 3DS and a Vita now...thank you tax returns!

So in my evaluations of the two units we shall go over what makes them great and what makes them suck and then come to an overall winner of sorts. I say of sorts because it is very hard to determine a winner when one has been out just a year and the other barely a month. Software-wise obviously the 3DS would be the clear winner. But what about the other merits? What about the system possibilities? How about the controls? Visuals? Overall design? These are the questions people want answered and I am here to kinda sorta give meager responses concerning most of those topics!

Console Design:

3DS - The 3DS is designed just like a DSi for the most part. It's major differences are the added circle pad, slightly larger top screen, and the obvious differences in the start and select buttons and a wifi switch. Apart from that the design part of the unit will feel very familiar to most of us who have played any of the DS systems.

Improvements could have been made though and there are some heavy design flaws. One is that the top screen being larger than the bottom causes line smudges when the unit is closed since the bottom portions plastic rubs up against it. This is very annoying. The second problem is the circle pad kinda sucks. Playing Street Fighter 4 it becomes apparent very quickly that the input window on the diagonals are very, very small. By that I mean if you want to do a quick up-right motion you have to be VERY precise in order for it to recognize that input. Mario Land on 3DS also has a similar problem with the circle pad in that running around feels strictly directional and not smooth like Mario 64 or Galaxy. It is as if the circle pad doesn't allow for good 3D plane movement. It is hard to describe unless you have used it but it's honestly not very good. Thankfully it doesn't really hinder Mario Land, but if Mario 64 was on this system it wouldn't play quite right on the circle pad.

Playstation Vita - The Vita is just like the PSP in many ways and improved in nearly every way. The only thing that's honestly the same is the L and R buttons, apart from that everything is pretty new. The D-pad is different from any Sony gaming product there has ever been and I haven't decided if that's a bad thing yet. Marvel 3 plays great on it though. There are two analog sticks and they feel great though it seems the sensitivity is a bit high. When trying to play Marvel 3 with the analog sticks moving left to right I often have my character jump when I don't want him to. I really have to play a dedicated 3D game to review it properly though. Oh, and the screen is soooo...soooo....sexy. Also the touch aspects of the Vita are far better than the 3DS, though I do question the feasibility of the Vita's touch screen over the 3DS since if you ask me stylus > fingers for gaming purposes. I can't fathom trying to play Trauma Center or Elite Beat Agents with my finger or many touch games for that matter. Plus who wants to touch this gorgeous screen?

The problems I have with the system's design though are the face buttons. They are like the 3DS buttons being hard and not very squishy. I LOVED the PSP buttons by comparison which felt like SNES buttons. It is a shame that only console controllers have those lovely buttons anymore. Also, the system is a beast! That doesn't bother me personally but it does fly in the face of portability. I also don't like that there isn't a Wifi switch like the 3DS has, especially given the nature of both unit's battery life problem which can be mitigated by turning Wifi off and it's much easier to do that on the 3DS.

Console Design Winner: Playstation Vita.

The system feels better in the hands and isn't inherently flawed like the 3DS top screen smudge issue. The screen is prettier and it has two analog sticks unlike the 3DS which requires an add-on. I find it hilarious and ironic that the system named for its 3D didn't include the basic functionality of a 3D system ie TWO analog sticks.

System Interface:

3DS - The 3DS interface is nearly identical to the Wii where you have a home channel with organizable squares to put your applications and games. It is clean and easy to navigate and adjustable too. Messing with system options during gameplay poses a problem since you have to close the game, but you are allowed to web browse during gameplay. Sadly not all functions act this way. Sometimes you have to close out of something to access something else and sometimes you don't. It really all depends.

Playstation Vita - Sony marketed the Vita like a portable PS3, and it lives up to that accolade in all but one area...the interface. For some odd reason they got rid of the menu bar synonymous with everything Sony's done lately from TV's to their Blu Ray players and of course their game systems. It has been replaced by touch-bubbles...Essentially Sony attempted to copy the way Apple handles its apps like a phone. But to me, it just looks very messy and cluttered and not much actually fits on each page. I do like the way you close out of stuff though ripping it down like a piece of paper. It is satisfying and not as cumbersome as Apple where you have to double tap the button then x out apps you don't want on anymore. Granted they are both cumbersome in their own little way, a marriage of the two ideas would be better. Still, why ditch the menu bar? It was honestly perfect. It was organized and very easy to navigate. It really was the perfect method for navigation in a game system. It didn't have any unnecessary areas and didn't look like garbage on the screen like the Xbox 360, why go for this bubble idea? Well I'll tell you why...the menu bar doesn't play nice with a touch screen and Sony wanted to whore it out as much as possible. The WORST part about the navigation on the Vita is you can't select anything with the controls other than the touch screen. What if the touch feature poops out? Useless system. One of my DS's touch screens has a permanent alignment problem but I still use it as a GBA player and various DS games that don't use the touch screen as a main control option (nearly all of them).

The only real positive here is that you can have anything open at any time even games. Also if the battery dies it saves all the things you had open where they were.

System interface Winner: 3DS

The 3DS stuck with what worked. If only the Vita did the same it would have been a much closer call.

Hardware:

3DS - The 3DS graphically speaking looks on par with or just worse than a Gamecube more often than not. I can't tell if we have seen the limits of what it can do yet but the games look pretty good most of the time. The only glaring issue it has is the games I have seen so far make no effort in applying Anti Ailising. The games look VERY jaggy if you pay too much attention. However, the strength in the 3DS is it's 3D technology which works very well. 3D without glasses looks great, however, I am one of those rare people that can leave it on for long stretches of time and it never bothers me. Most people from what I hear anecdotal or read online either don't like the feature outright or complain that it bothers them. That's all well and good, but the point is it works, and it works really well. People that complain about it baffle me, like, you knew what you were buying right? This is the selling point after all. Does it do much for gaming though? Nope...but it's pretty freaking sweet.

Playstation Vita - This system is a beast and performs nearly on par with a PS3. The visuals haven't been exactly on par with the PS3 though as games like Marvel vs Capcom 3 have noticeably lowered effects and MLB The Show 12 also has some lesser textures and overall worse lighting than its console counterpart, but for a handheld these graphics are matched by nothing. Though the iPad 3 comes out soon with a quad core processor could easily outpace the Vita, but...seriously who wants an all touch screen gaming device? The Vita for its innovation sports a touch screen on the back of the system....what possible use this will have I dare not say but it is there. That's really the only review I can give the back touch screen....it exists. Ultimately, it is difficult to reach properly and I question the feasibility of accuracy.

Hardware Winner: Tie

Yeah, I can't decide here. Each are a technical marvel for different reasons. No glasses 3D is impressive and the powerhouse abilities of the Vita are equally impressive though less inventive.

If I were to rate the potential of each system for software tied to the hardware though....

Software Potential:

3DS - Unlike the Wii, Nintendo's handheld systems are known for having great 3rd party support, quite possibly the best 3rd party support across any system. But we are in a different world these days. A time when iPhones and Androids occupy many developers and less are interested in making large scale handheld efforts. The 3DS has a year under its belt and still only a handful of decent games are available for it. What can we expect going forward? Well, that's not something I can answer, what I can do is speculate on the potential of what the system can do. What it can do is more or less what the DS could do only better online potential and larger games. We have already seen a great Zelda remake on the 3DS so the potential for a new 3D Zelda is certainly there.

Playstation Vita - The potential here as far as history is concerned is a much less bright spot considering most developers abandoned the PSP in the last two years of its existence. Will the same snobbery occur with the Vita? Possibly, but that's not what we're speculating on. The potential for the Vita is almost boundless. From rumors of Bioshock on the system, to ideas of an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game, the Vita can do it! Also, the Vita has great connectivity options with the PS3 but as we have seen with Nintendo anyway that usually ends up being a limited or forgotten feature. But the potential to play PS3 games on the go, or even elsewhere in ones own home is sweet. So far it only works with a few games none of which I own.

Software Potential Winner:
Realistically 3DS

I'd love to give this to the Vita since I feel like developers could really take advantage of that power, the online connectivity support the games have, and those analog sticks makes the Vita a much better candidate for "potential." But when the fan gets struck by reality poop it will all rain down on the Vita most likely. The odds are stacked against it to do well. The teeming history Nintendo has in the handheld market, coupled with developers probably not wanting to develop console caliber games at $40 really hurts the Vita's chances. So odds are we will see more software on the 3DS all the while wishing we could play it on the Vita's hardware. Think of Zelda on this sexy beast....droooool.

Conclusions:

The gamer in me would of course recommend both systems, but the practical man in me who knows it's too god damn expensive to own both and supply yourself with their respective libraries is a task only for those who can afford it, or those who can afford to go broke on it. A game system can only be measured by the game library it ends up having and that is often difficult to predict. If you think the Vita will do well, buy that since it is sure to get some amazing portable games. But if you think the 3DS will dominate (it probably will) I'd recommend that especially if you like Nintendo's games anyway like Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, etc.

But purely as a system PURELY as a piece of technology, I would recommend the Vita. It's nicer to look at, nicer to hold, nicer to use, and it just works better as a multimedia device than the 3DS does if that's your thing. Plus if you have a PS3 it is really cool to see the trophy support integrate with your existing account, and see all your PSN friends online on the go. The best part is you can MESSAGE them! The 3DS just lets you see who's on...and that's it. I guess I should have done an online comparison...well...3DS online is terrible apart from playing games online which isn't so bad, but doing anything else with it is god awful. Netflix is slow, browsing is slow, yadda yadda yadda. Vita works much better in this capacity.


*In one hand I play 3DS, in the other I play Vita....yet no progress is had...*

Soul Calibur 5 - Tale of Connection Errors

Soul Calibur has always been a series I loved while playing Soul Calibur 2...and pretty much just 2. It had an expansive single player mode, a large likeable roster of characters, and heck even my friends liked it and weren't even fighting game fans like myself. Soul Calibur 3 I skipped, and Soul Calibur 4 I only played for 2 weeks straight while I was drugged up after a hernia operation so I don't remember it that well.

What I DO remember is Soul Calibur 4 at least had a lot of characters I enjoyed using and single player options that were decent though nothing like SC2. This game, however, seems to be stripped of just about everything the Soul Calibur series has been known for. It has a stripped down arcade mode, a very short and lackluster story mode, and not much else. There's no challenge modes, no AI tower, really nothing else here.

But of course, we are in the online era of gaming now so the question becomes does the online aspect of this game outweigh the lacking single player content and content overall? Well...my title gives it away but isn't it more fun to read my bitching rants anyway?

Gameplay:

They changed quite a bit in the combat system for this game for those familiar with the Soul Calibur games. They added a meter for characters to perform EX moves that cost meter but combo easier and create more damage. The meter also allows you to guard impact which is a change I feel is for the worse. I loved in Soul Calibur 2 how you could get into these little guard impact wars back and forth but now in this game since it costs meter it becomes a limited option. Furthermore it's actually much harder to land a guard impact in this game which makes it all the more risky to try. It honestly doesn't feel like a viable option anymore as defense which becomes a REAL problem playing online! Also, with that meter they added ultra moves which I like for the most part. Every character has an ultra with the exact same input each. This is great except the disparity in usability for each ultra is quite wide. Like, I would argue Cervantes ultra is flat out useless, but Natsu's is amazing and comboable...AND does more damage than Cervantes! Why then are they the same input or require the same meter when one has WAY more usefulness over the other?

The gameplay has also taken changes for the worse as Namco decided to remove a large amount of the cast we have become familiar with over the last 3-4 games. Characters such as Talim, Yun Seong, Kilik, Takki, Amy, and more are all gone. Well, Kilik is in the game but he is a mirror character (ie he uses weapons of other male characters at random). Honestly the worst offense of this game is the needless insertion of mirror characters. There's like...3 of them! Why? It honestly makes no sense and they are wasted slots. I am also very annoyed 2 characters are only unlocked through pre-orders each at a different location. So there's no way that someone can have both of these unique characters on their game yet until Lameco issues DLC allowing us to buy them. If the game weren't already stripped of characters enough, THIS was a huge slap in the face.

As mentioned before the single player mode is bare-bones but thankfully they included a decent training mode. It isn't as robust as other fighters granted, but it gets the job done and hell we could have been without that as well considering the state the game is in as it is.

I even have a beef with the character creation system. While it is as good as ever in the ability to make just about anything you want, the problem with it is unlocking stuff. As far as I can tell there is no way to choose which items unlock for you. You have to play the game a considerable amount of time to see everything and then once all your options are open to you, you can start making decisions on what character to make. I can't remember how SC4 did this exactly but I do know Tekken just let you purchase everything with in game money. That was a much better system! I could look through and pick shit I wanted instead of playing the game for hours on end and then seeing a message saying "You unlocked more pants!" Thanks? Kinda wanted shoulder armor or belts but oooookay.

I saved my largest complaint for last, the online. When I first got the game I could not finish a match online, not one. Literally 20 matches in a row I got a connection error and the match was dropped. Now, as a disclaimer, I am keenly aware I'm in the general minority on this issue but there are others having this problem too. The fact that a "connection error" occurs at all is deplorable all by itself though despite poor connections. I have literally played EVERY fighting game that exists on the PS3 online barring KoF 12 and none of them disconnected me from my opponent outside of a power outage or rage-quit. But SC5 has that lovely distinction of being the ONLY online game I have ever played that disconnects me at a very reliable pace, as in all the time. While floundering with this game I managed to complete roughly 30 matches over the course of 6 hours trying.

I have recently re-tooled my connection and am able to complete 7/10 matches now. It is still awful that even ONE drops in a 100 matches though let alone 7 out of every 10. The worst offense of all though is how often I get screwed by connection errors. I fully admit I am terrible at this game, Street Fighter is my bag and generally I win there 70% of the time online. But this game I am hovering around 35% but what disgusts me is that this is NOT reflective of how good or bad I am either. I will lose legitimately 7 or 8 times out of every 10 matches because I am god awful, I readily admit that, but when I FINALLY get paired up with a guy as bad as me, and am winning what happens? Connection ERROR! I probably have a good 20 wins that have gone unaccounted for because of this bullshit. I should have a 45% win ratio at least, and yet here I am.

To its credit though, while I am in a match the game is relatively lagless. Sure there are a couple matches where there is noticeable input lag, but as a majority it feels quite nice online while you are in a match anyway. I still find SF4's online better in the lag department overall but for a 3D fighter this is by far the best quality barring the constant connection drops.

Graphics:

The Soul Calibur series has been widely known to push the boundaries of fighting game graphics and while Soul Calibur 5 looks great, it doesn't do much more than what SC4 did. I can't fault the game for not improving upon 5 year old hardware though. It still looks great however.

Story:

??? ......... ??? .......... uh..... yeeeeah....

Sound:

Probably the best part of this whole game is the music. Every track in this game is incredible and amazing. Even the Assassin's Creed remix is a joy to listen to and I have a track record of hating remixes. The only real downside to the audio is the lead female character has the most annoying voice of all time.

Conclusion:

Soul Calibur 5 does everything right when it comes to having an offline versus mode...everything else is utter garbage. From removing characters in place of mirrors to the atrocious netcode and lacking single player modes Soul Calibur 5 is rather offensive to every ounce of me that loved SC2. I bought the game already knowing the content was lacking, but I was unaware of the character roster being shitty and the disconnecting online. I had planned to enjoy doing marathons the game online and then the experience is so atrocious I just don't think I can do it. Which is really sad considering that was my plan for the game, and now it has become all but useless. I really thought it would be a worthy $60 purchase but like all Namco fighting games just wait a few months for it to be $30. Oh, and don't expect any netcode patches either....it's Namco we're talking about here.

*I was going to win a battle of SC5 online, but then I took a network error to the knee.*

Dead Island - Fetch me a Slurpy!

Dead Island offers the promise of exactly its title, dead things on an island. With a premise as simplistic as this it was a little jarring to get the amazingly deep trailers we got for this game before it came out. Our hopes were then heightened to believe this game would now contain some semblance of plot and character development. Sadly the game itself is designed around fetch quest systems that seem to follow me between nearly every game I play these days. With that in mind it must be understood that any game designed this way inherently loses any hope of having a decent plot, developed characters, or anything that could possibly live up to the 40 seconds of artful rewind death we got from the trailer. No, instead we have two meat-head male leads, and two female leads who I swear have two lines each in the whole game....but we'll get to the failures of the plot in its appropriate section later.

Gameplay:

Dead Island plays exactly like Borderlands...that's the game. For those of you who never played Borderlands here's the rub. You select from 4 characters who each have specific abilities that separates themselves from each other to slay hoards of zombies. Hilariously, caught in a Zombie Apocalypse the 4 people who are immune to the disease also are the same 4 people perfectly equipped to handle just such an occasion. Plot devices aside, you gain experience doing missions and slaying zombies and then putting points into a skill tree further customizing your character and enhancing their zombie slaying prowess.

Also, just like Borderlands the enemies scale with you, you collect countless weapons with multicolored titles relating to their strength and rarity, and each character has a special "rage" ability which acts as a sort of limit break allowing your character to briefly be the most efficient zombie slaying bloodthirsty thing on the island. Needless to say, also just like Borderlands the entire game is based around collecting sidequests from countless NPC's. The only real difference between the two games is you mainly use fun and interesting weapons in Borderlands and in Dead Island you use...a baseball bat perpetually and thus magically on fire? So yeah that's really it, one game's combat focuses on guns the other melee weapons.

Ok, well the fetch quest mechanic isn't always bad right? Sometimes they offer interesting quests like Skyrim that has like 4 or 5 quests that make you go "oooh, I'm glad I did that instead of deliver 12 wolf shits to an old lady." But in Dead Island do we get any of those? No. And what's worse is the quests in this game are so mind blisteringly boring you start WISHING for that old lady and begging to fight zombie wolves and playing a mini game where you fish around in their zombie wolf anus to acquire shits for her.

I mean let me set it up for you...you're in a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE right? People are aware you're in a zombie apocalypse and yet their worries that they hire you to solve are not life or death, are not do something of vague importance to survival, no, some of these people ask you to do inanely stupid things like solve my marital dispute, or slay my now zombie husband for me, or find my priceless heirloom in the midst of hoards of the undead...ARE YOU PEOPLE FUCKING NUTS?

Ok I get I've landed in the middle of Night of the Fetch Quests, so of course I should be expecting this kind of shit but I mean come on! You seriously expect me to risk my life over an ancient wind up pocket watch? In the middle of the end of all things your world will somehow be cohesive and calming if you are reunited with your grandfather's pocket watch! This is one example of why Skyrim is at least better fetch questing as I would have the option in that game to lay waste to these fucktards and feel better.

There's not much else to say about the gameplay other than the very nature of the combat system which is exactly what you'd expect it to be. First person melee combat, the most perfected and greatest form of video game combat...or...you know...not... At the very least I do admire that they focused on melee combat in a zombie game since they are on a beach resort of an island where finding munitions would indeed be a rare thing. Amazingly though this is where the developers decide to use their realism, you know not on the characters, not on the really weird enemies that don't resemble humans or the effects of the virus as explained by the scientists in the game...No they want to play the realism card on the combat system which inherently causes it to be as mundane as humanly possible. I'm sorry, but a ZOMBIE game that makes me play 30 hours before I can use a shotgun is a very poor zombie game indeed. What's worse is one of the 4 characters you choose has a specialty in guns...I didn't pick her but I can't imagine how boring the game must be if you do as you hardly find any weapons or ammo in the entire game. The only use the firearms ever have are on actual people and NOT zombies as they don't provide more ammo when you kill them unlike humans.

And the survival aspects of the game are nullified considering when you DO die you just lose money, like Borderlands, and are respawned a few feet away to try again. Admittedly, though first person melee combat is awful no matter how you do it (and yeah there's no blocking in this game either) the satisfying blows you land on zombies is fun and even addicting at times. You can break their arms, cut off limbs, smash their heads in, huck weapons at them with satisfying sounds. It's honestly the only thing that kept me playing that whole time. It goes without saying that this isn't something that would keep the average gamer involved however...just a masochistic one like myself.

Story:

As mentioned earlier there is no story, not like the trailers lead us to believe. You get drunk at a party, and then wake up to a zombie apocalypse. Now don't even get me started on the zombie apocalypse scenario since it never makes sense in the first place. I mean I can accept the reanimation of the dead and even a fast spreading virus by means of biting of others and such...what I can NEVER grasp however is the widespread nature of the "zombie" disease. The very disease requires that an already infected zombie bites or claws a human to eventually become one too. But how it gets further than a few dozen people blows my mind every time. I mean here we have infected people who's only goal is to fully consume all they come into contact with right? It's a mindless all encompassing consumption of others right? So how are MORE created? It just so happens that hundreds of thousands of people only get minor scratches and get away only to become zombies JUST for the sole purpose of having more zombies? I mean basically what we have here isn't so much a widespread disease, it is instead just a whole fuckton of people who "barely" got away thus creating the apocalypse scenario. And apparently it ALWAYS happens this way. I was honestly looking forward to seeing a zombie story take the idea of the zombie apocalypse in an intelligent way making it somewhat believable...sadly that's not the case.

And yes my rant about the logistics of a zombie apocalypse is a far more involved story than the one we were given. Yeah I already covered the story believe it or not. Oh what happens at the end you ask? You leave the island...

Graphics:

The graphics are half the reason I kept playing. Seeing the smushyness of the zombies was endlessly enjoyable for me. I played on the PC version so the game looked just fine, though I hear the console counterparts have some pretty terrible glitchyness about them. Still my fetch questings looked fine, great lighting effects, varying scenery, and competent character models and textures. Nothing to really complain about but also nothing much to overtly praise either.

Music:

There are some very minor pieces of music here but they serve the mood well enough. Weirdly though there are some heartfelt piano melodies strewn about in the game as if we're to give a damn about any of the characters involved in the game and their zombie plight. We don't...but the music is good either way.

Conclusion:

Dead Island drew me in for 40 odd hours in the exact same way Borderlands did. The constant upgrading of your character, finding better loot, and being led around for hours on end by the little red map marker is really all that kept me playing both games. I can't really admit that I was having fun in either game, more like I was enamored with idea that I was progressing in it and completing things. The quick satisfaction of tallying another notch in your questlog, or getting a new weapon that did 50 more damage only to see how many less hits it took to take down a zombie are just two of many psychological tricks these types of games play on the user to goad them into playing more. It's sad that most games have now adopted this type of gameplay, hell even first person shooters like Modern Warefare are guilty of this formula.

In the end I'm really not sure exactly how, as of late, I have fallen into playing games with endless amounts of meaningless fetch quests whether it be Skyrim, Zelda Skyward Sword, Fallout New Vegas , and now this...but I am starting to believe that I have been cursed by the gaming gods over some offense I committed against them. I can't specifically identify what I have done to disgrace them so...but to hopefully alleviate this in the future I'm going to sacrifice a good game to them. Now with their grace on my side, I shall venture forth and play Rage, ID's latest shooter. A classic style shooter game in no way could possibly hinder me with more fetch quests.....

....

....

GOD DAMMIT!

*"SQUISH" Haha...his head went splat....oooh look another zombie to splat....*