Planet Hell

Its ALIVE!!!

2011-12-18T19:42:00.001Z

Wow, I've been away from the blog for what seems like ages. I'm not ready to let the blog die yet. Time to start posting more frequently on here I think. I've been mostly busy with daily life, mostly consisting of my rather busy university schedule. I'm now in 2nd year of my Optometry course and I've just started my exams for the first semester. Pathology exam=done, Ophthalmic Materials and Introductory Diagnostic Techniques still to do at the start of the week. After that, I'm done for Christmas! =D (Well once I finish off my Christmas shopping for people)

So hopefully I'll have some time to get some posts done on here and play some of the games that have unfortunately become added to my long list of games which I have backlogged over the last few months. Some big titles in there that I picked up but didn't get a chance to play include;
Dark Souls (PS3, 360) I really, really enjoyed Demon's Souls so want to play this when I have a decent amount of time and concentration to devote to it, to really enjoy it and progress through it. Maybe over Christmas I'll get a chance to play this one. I got it on PS3 but I now realise its on the 360 as well. I kind of wonder if the community has taken to this game.
Xenoblade Chronicles (You Americans can now rejoice that it is coming to you/mutter under your breath about the high import prices you payed to import.) It seems the Wii is coming to the end of its lifetime, which is a bit unusual...I don't normally like to see consoles fade away or developers leave them alone because a newer console is on its way out as it usually means we miss out on a lot of good games. I will need to do some reading up about the Wii U (I'm still not too sure whether its a new console altogether or some kind of Wii peripheral...I watched the videos of it initially but didn't really do much investigating into what it actually is. I did a similar thing with the PS Vita, I still don't fully understand what it does and how it integrates with back compatibility and PS3 games.) Even though the Wii looks to be getting close to the end of its lifetime (it hasn't been that long has it?) there are still some good games coming out. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii) got some really good praise and reviews when it came out recently. I'll only be picking that one up if I can cheaply find the special edition with the Wii Motion Plus bundled in with it (because I hate to buy peripherals and don't have that thing yet) Dragon Quest X: Mezameshi Itsutsu no Shuzoku Online or Dragon Quest X: Rise of the Five Tribes Online (Wii/Wii U) should definitely be interesting. People are finding it fashionable to hate on this one and its not even out yet. I'm optimistic about it-I had some good fun with Monster Hunter Tri recently. I mean, the devoted Capcom servers are not ideal (they kicked me off more than a few times, although I don't know how much that was down to my router being kind of far from the Wii) but they did the job. For a free online game (it had a subscription fee in Japan), it was a lot of fun and done quite well. So...after that long winded aside.. Xenoblade is one mammoth game from what I've heard, so I really want to have some time available to really enjoy it. I've only heard good things, and for me (if I'd played either), this or Skyrim would be my game of the year. I expect these 2 games to do well this year in terms of awards.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim (PS3, 360, PC) is the next one that everyone has been talking about that I've not played yet. I don't mind though (even though at every moment people have been inadvertently trying to spoil the game for me) as I've had a lot of studying to do for the past few weeks, plus I've got millions of games to play in the meantime. It will be in my possession at Christmas (Thankyou to my awesome girlfriend!) Not too sure what kind of character I'm going to play through as when I start the game up over the holidays yet. I'm thinking Dark Elf (like I normally end up going in Elder Scrolls games), Khajit or Argonian (the cats and lizard characters always look quite cool!=p)

Theres quite a lot of games that I've played through recently actually...

I finally got some games on Steam, and got my account upgraded fully. Damn steam sales finally made me give in. Despite the fact that there were so many games on sale in the Autumn sale, I only picked up the Zeboyd games double pack of Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves The World. I've played through Breath of Death so far and found it pretty fun actually. Its got a lot of old school references and throwbacks. Check out my screenshots for some of the ones I noticed. Not too sure how to link to them exactly, but have a look on my profile; http://steamcommunity.com/id/berserkalucard/

I got The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D on my birthday from 'Ms Planet Hell' I suppose you could call her hehe =p So I finally got a chance to play this game again after absolutely ages! I never originally got an N64 so didn't get to play what some people have called one of the best (if not the best) games of all time. I saw it occasionally at my friend's house and on the Gamecube collection thing that had it, but was always put off by the horrific N64 graphics...They just made me really nauseous and scared. Ironically, the game was to be released when the 3DS came out and it was able to give people headaches for different reasons =p I was really impressed with the graphics they did for this version. The 3D was a lot better done than the previous 3D game I played, Monkey Ball. I think the 3DS is starting to get some decent games coming out now, its starting to become a system people are wanting to play now. Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land (or some stupid name) are two that seem good so far. I've picked up the 2nd half of the Ambassador programme games now, and there are some quite decent games thrown in there for the GBA!

I got really into the Monster Hunter games over the space of a few months (read: 500+ hours into MH: Freedom Unite) so I picked up Monster Hunter Tri after ages of deliberating (putting off buying the game). It was nowhere near as long to finish as Freedom Unite (which has the most content of the MH games to come out in English) but it does have a lot to do in the online quests. I finished that one in about 40 or 50 hours. I also found a good price for Portable 3rd shortly after Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD ver. was released so I imported the original one on psp (actually I got the best sellers edition.) and really enjoyed that. It has a really nice feel to it, the graphics are amazing for a psp game =p Jinouga is a really nicely designed flagship monster, and I'm definitely looking forward to picking up Monster Hunter 3G even though that will take me out of my current MH-free period...seriously, those games are like crack in game form XD

I was in quite a mood to play old school feeling dungeon crawling games, and I got through Etrian Odyssey and Orcs & Elves. One is huge, long and difficult (nearly went to a thats what she said moment there) and one is short and unusual. Both are really good fun though with a lot of nice quirks and throwbacks to older games, and I'm looking forward to playing more dungeon crawlers soon. Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard is in my list of games to get through, and I'm really wanting to pick up Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls. It looks really tough but good in terms of gameplay and artstyle, all for a budget price on PSN.

There are a few games that have been announced for English audiences that I'm definitely looking forward to. Some I never thought would come out over here. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (PS3) has recently been announced for America and Europe (on my birthday!) Yeah, I know this is quite old news, but I've been away for ages, and I'll get to the newer stuff eventually =p

Ni no Kuni should be really good! I'm hoping that it sells well over here, as it kind of flopped when it came out in Japan. They need some kind of special edition to get people interested I reckon =p Either way, I'll pick it up to support Namco Bandai in localising similar games.

The Last Story is another one that I was pleased that it would be coming out to Europe, but I thought it wouldn't be a definite (and would somehow depend on how well Xenoblade did, even though I'm pretty sure they are in no way connected) release. Europeans have a release date for this one now, which is super good news!

Tales fans are getting quite a lot of good news as well recently. Tales of the Abyss came out here, so I picked it up but didn't start it right away like I had wanted to. I was too busy finishing off Tales of Phantasia (and studying mostly). I'll get to Tales of the Abyss soon though, I'm glad us PAL gamers got a chance to play that finally without importing. Not sure if I'll fall into that game's hater camp or appreciative camp. Tales of Graces f has a few release dates. America first and then sometime Summer 2012 for us lot in Europe. Hopefully Tales of Xillia ends up coming over, or at least Innocence R on the Vita =p

I could go on for much longer, but I'll leave it at that! My exams are looming, but that means I'll be done soon at least... =p

Gods Eater Burst

2011-11-10T00:51:00.001Z

The opening from Gods Eater Burst. Just cos its rather awesome ;D

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T19:00:00.001Z

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope you have a good time! =D
I've not got too much planned other than studying for a class test in uni this week. I've selected a couple atmospheric and potentially 'scary' games that I might play through briefly this evening. I don't have many actual survival horror type games unfortunately (even though I've had the urge recently to play some old Resident Evil and Silent Hill games) but I'll make do with the stuff I've got through to university with me.

Demon's Souls (PS3) ~ Tower of Latria (World 3)
This place scared the crap out of me when I first played through. It doesn't quite have the same effect on me when I play through it on my NG+ and nuke everything in one hit, but I'll either play some of this or start a new game so the monsters are more of a threat. The sound and dark atmosphere in this place is perfect. Really creepy and unnerving. =D

Dark Souls is out now as well, I might try and get a bit further in that. I love the sense of not knowing what is round the next corner.

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (Wii)
I haven't actually played this game yet even though I was ridiculously hyped up for it before launch. Really dissapointed I still haven't played it, so I might do so tonight =p From what I've heard, it has a really interesting feel to it. It is set in a bleak, lonely post-apocalyptic future which seems to have a really haunting beauty. I think for the atmosphere to be created, I'll have to put in a couple hours to this game, but I'm definitely looking forward to playing this one =D

Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call (PS2)
I picked this one up recently even though I have a huge backlog of SMT games, as it has ridiculously good reviews. One thing I always liked about the Shin Megami Tensei games was the dark, mature and kind of unsettling feeling you can get in the story. Devil Survivor actually pulled it off pretty well, when Demons basically start munching on the helpless civilians. Even though the main character's reactions aren't the best or most convincing, some people do get kind of creeped out by the games. This one is closer to Digital Devil Saga(which I've played most of the first one) but still haven't played Lucifer's Call (or Nocturne as its known in other parts of the world.)

I'm definitely looking forward to fusing and negotiating with some really fucked up demons from myth and folklore heheh!

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (PS3)
Even though I have all of the Castlevania games since the first Game Boy Advance game, I quite liked the atmosphere the shiny HD graphics creates in this game. It felt less like a Castlevania and more like a God of War clone, which...I wasn't too keen on, but I loved the grandeur of the vampire's castle about halfway through the game. I might put in some time to my save on this one, and see how amazing looking things are.
Or I might play some more on the GBA ones, they were always awesome for music and gorgeously gothic backdrops to the levels.

If I had a more varied selection of games (ie less RPGs), I'd probably play some real horrific games. Too bad (probably a good thing) I can't run Amnesia or don't have things like the Silent Hill games. I think I really suck at proper scary games XD

Extra Life 2011!

2011-10-01T19:23:00.003+01:00

AAAAAAAAAAAAAaaages since I last posted...I feel really bad that I've been neglecting this blog for so long now, but it won't disappear completely!

So I'm posting this because very soon I will be participating in Extra Life 2011, a charity that raises money for Children's Miracle Network hospitals. It is an American charity, but it is open to people all across the world, and I was able to donate to my local hospital (very near my house in Edinburgh.) So I decided since this was near my birthday and I'd always wanted to take part in it, to make a team from friends and people I know at uni and play video games for 24 hours on the 15th of October.

Our team name is Dr. Octagonapus and this is our team page. http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.team&eventID=501&teamID=5582

What we will be doing is playing Monster Hunter games for 24 hours on a sponsorship basis to raise $500. There are 5 of us involved and we are all looking for donations, as are the children who go to the Royal Sick Children's Hospital in Edinburgh, which I can definitely vouch for as a hospital!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you can donate, however little!

Gamescom news!

2011-08-19T18:48:00.004+01:00

Gamescom 2011 has now finished, throughout I've been half keeping an eye on the proceedings. While there have been many games shown at Gamescom 2011 that I've been interested in, there has been confirmation that the 2nd and 3rd Operation Rainfall titles, Last Story and Pandora's Tower will definitely be coming to Europe in 2012. There was previously a lot of rumours but nothing concrete from Nintendo on these as far as I could tell.

Source: http://gamescom.gamespot.com/story/6329601/wii-last-story-pandoras-tower-hitting-europe-in-2012

http://www.videogamer.com/news/last_story_and_pandoras_tower_coming_to_wii_in_2012.html

There have been quite a few nice trailers and gameplay videos to come out of it as well. Namely for Dark Souls, the spiritual successor to Demon's Souls (probably my favourite PS3 game I've played so far)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/aug/19/gamescom-2011-dark-souls-preview

Xenoblade Chronicles

2011-08-15T14:11:00.002+01:00

4 days to go till Xenoblade Chronicles comes out! That is all :p

Live Cookie munching (Cookie picks #2)

2011-07-09T23:24:00.016+01:00

I posted yesterday about me choosing from a couple games which game I'll play next, so decided to play a bit of Jeanne D'Arc and Tactics Ogre: Let us cling together on the PSP and see which I prefer, which hooks me more and which I might ultimately play as my next game.

So what I'll be doing is a kind of live blog thing...I'd totally like to stream it and link my Justin TV profile here, but I don't have all the necessary hardware for streaming yet. One cable closer though, after getting a PSP component cable :D

Anyway, I'm feeling ambitious so what I'll do is a half hour of each game starting at 11:30 tonight (3 mins away) and then post my thoughts on the games as I go along. If I'm not tired or bored of the games (or indeed if half an hour isn't enough for the openings to play out, I'll do another half hour of each)

Its now 23:28, time to fire up Jeanne D'Arc (simply because it comes first in the alphabet)

[23:30] Starting the timer and watching the opening. Looks Disney esque/bad Saturday morning cartoon from the 80s or 90s...

[23:35] Is that one of the clowns from FFIX? :o

[23:36] Freaky kid..but interesting cutscene

[23:37] Time to move on from said cutscene and see some of the character portraits, dialogue and music.

[23:41] A second anime cutscene? Impressive! Voice acting is a bit suspect in places (bad accents) but its still good to see them cramming a few of these in where most RPGs would just use dialogue to get this stuff across.

[23:44] A battle already? Good that they throw you into the action :D

[23:46] A few turns into the battle and it seems pretty easy to pick up, quite standard SRPG stuff

[23:50] First battle finished with not too much difficulty, although that Orc Knight did take a turn or two to finish

[23:53] A chance to Save thankfully, and another cutscene before stuff starts getting intense :o I know I've not been playing long but I am drawn in to the already dark (and cliched) storyline

4 minutes left on the clock and just one turn into my second battle...argh..do I turn off the power now or extend it to an hour right away?

[00:00] Another cutscene, wow cool armour! :D I'm adding on a few mins for stoppages for texting and starting the game up, so hope I can finish this battle soon and save!

[00:03] Wow, Godspeed is like hella broken... Its like the Scouts from Valkyria Chronicles but worse XD

[00:05] Crap, good thing theres no perma death..just lost my wee redhead friend in battle :(

[00:07] Wow, this game is tough. I lost my second guy and nearly Jeanne as well. I blame her transforming back to normal for nearly overshifting it from my overconfident position to a game over...I nearly lost Jeanne so had to move out of range and heal up. Always play safe in these kinds of games. Add to that there is a turn limit! Man...tough game. Stage 2 nearly got me, but I passed it :D

[00:15] Or so I thought. I think I spoke too soon. Another enemy showed up, and with one guy on the field under my command and the turn limit counter already showing, I was a bit nervous to be sure.

So I thought I could use a Healing item and then move to a safe distance, but close enough to start attacking asap next turn. Turns out you can’t use items and then move...So that was partially a waste of a turn, as the next turn I couldn’t get into range to attack. I got him down to 1 HP with an attack and a counter, but the turn counter ran out on me. Seriously 10 turns to finish such a tough level? Game Overed on Stage 2...got to be a record for me XD

I guess I now know what to expect of the game, and definitely to take my time more now. Anyway, my time is up on this one. So I’ll post some more thoughts on the game tomorrow and move onto Tactics Ogre, as Blogger seems to be having issues. Its made me lose my post edits a few times on this tonight...

Its now Sunday morning and thought I'd flesh this post out a bit more with my thoughts on the game so far. In terms of graphics it seems to have an odd style, with what looks like cel-shaded graphics. It reminds me of Tales of Symphonia in a way. I'm not always too keen on cel-shading as the games don't always age well...there are some exceptions (The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker being one example.) So they do like quite sharp and nice in this game, with some quite detailed backgrounds going on. Add to that some very abundant well done anime cutscenes (I think I saw 3 or 4 in the first 45 mins of play)

I think what will put people off most about this game is the difficulty. It seems unfairly difficult, with rather unecessary conditions in battle such as the 10 turn limit in the second battle. It gives tutorials but really kicks you in the face if you aren't careful. As for the battles themselves, they seem very similar to what you'd expect from a tactical rpg such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea or Luminous Arc. You have a player phase and an enemy phase, but there are some restrictions I'm not keen on. You can't do anything in between your characters finishing their actions and the enemy phase. I like to be able to double check I've done everything, got everyone in the right positions and check the battlefield over before I give the turn over to the computer. In this game you can't do that. You can take back some stuff such as movement if you make a mistake or aren't happy with the position. I'm slightly concerned the game might have some balancing issues, as for a few turns I was tearing through the enemy with Jeanne in her armoured form, and then it swung right back in the computer's favour when the transformation wore off.

We'll see how the game goes from here, it does have a lot going for it, but I'm interested in how it will shape up compared to one of the heavy hitters of the srpg sub-genre when I play through the opening bit of Tactics Ogre: Let us cling together later today. Stay tuned for more Live Cookie munching :D

Cookie picks

2011-07-08T23:45:00.006+01:00

I'm blasting through Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and thought I'd maybe start up something new. I was considering starting Tales of Symphonia which I recently got, but not exactly sure if I have the right memory card and whatnot for the Wii. I'll look up the stuff for it and hopefully start it soon :D

Anyway, I chose 3 random games that I've not finished from my PSP and DS collection via the Fortune cookie option over at Backloggery and came up with these 3:

Tactics Ogre: Let us cling together (PSP)

Etrian Odyssey (DS)

Jeanne D'Arc (PSP)

Its probably just that I don't have that many games left for my DS and PSP compared to some other times when I've been buying more games and I've been careful to play the shorter games first, but it seems that I've got 3 very hard, long (stop laughing) games, at least in this random selection.

We have Tactics Ogre, a strategy RPG very much in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story (I think at least in the text font lol..) I've heard it can be very frustrating, but I'm definitely stoked to try. I made it through some ridiculously tough bits in Final Fantasy Tactics: WotL, so don't see why I shouldn't be able to get through this game.

Then Etrian Odyssey...a game I've liked so far but it really intimidates me. I've put in a few hours to it and I've slowly made my way through the first stratum. I've got as far as the Stratum boss, which is like a whole new level of ass kicking. You've got the normal enemies, then the FOEs, then these guys...super tough. It takes so long to level up and grind, but I've been itching for some turn base RPGs recently, and Golden Sun has been perfect (even if a little easy) so I might give this another shot, and try at least clear the first stratum. Maybe things will fall into place and get easier...

Jeanne D'Arc, along with Tactics Ogre has probably only been in my PSP once, and that was to watch the opening movie. Admittedly I wasn't impressed with the crappy looking anime cutscene. It just seemed like really ugly in terms of the character design. I have heard its a top notch SRPG though, similar to Tactics Ogre.

Which should I pick? I might either decide on one of them tomorrow, or give each of them an hour or so to impress me. The PSP games are tempting, that way I could finish up Golden Sun on the DS and have one of them alongside, even more so because I just bought a PSP component cable the other day which means I could play them on a bit bigger screen on my TV :P

Gloria Union (PSP)

2011-06-15T11:41:00.004+01:00

http://www.siliconera.com/2011/03/29/gloria-union-is-the-next-psp-game-from-sting-and-atlus/

http://www.siliconera.com/2011/04/05/gloria-union-twin-fates-in-blue-oceans-story-starts-with-a-sunken-kingdom/

Oh, I should say, this one is for Blaze Union: Story to reach the Future, another PSP game in the 'Union' spinoff series (Yggdra, Blaze, Gloria.)

I really hope we see English releases of these Sting games..

Vanillaware E3 2011

2011-06-14T12:18:00.017+01:00

Vanillaware are one of my favourite game studios that usually get overlooked a bit. I was recently on a stream of someone playing Odin Sphere and there seemed to be only a few people who had played the game or even heard of it. The games I've played from them are Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade. These games are 2D sidescrolling action games/action RPGs depending on how you look at it. I'd say that they have enough RPG elements to put them in that end of the spectrum. What makes them really interesting to me is the artstyle. The sprites and backgrounds have this really amazing stylistic, vibrant and exaggerated appearance. Couple that with some really amazing music and at least to me, you have some excellent games. Some critics might say that slowdown in places and slightly repetitive nature of the gameplay really detracts but I was just really engaged by the combat and just how amazing the game looks that those things never really bugged me at all.

Odin Sphere is primarily based on Norse mythology as you might be able to tell from the name, not quite as strongly as say Valkyrie Profile, but its definitely a strong influence throughout the game. It borrows from a lot of other legends, myths and stories as well, which really builds up a nice rich game in my opinion.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade has a distinctly Japanese feel. I'm not meaning that it looks like it was made by Japanese developers-I'm referring to the feudal Japanese history setting and plot that it has. Its all about ninjas, samurai, a bit of political intrigue and quite a good shake of mythology coming across in the various enemies you fight and characters you encounter such as the Inari Kitsune(fox deities.) Its got some really interesting areas you go through, such as the water dwelling boss who you fight in this really stylistic but dramatic backdrop clearly based on The Great Wave off Kanagawa, one of my favourite Japanese woodblock prints.

So thats a bit of a tangent into two of Vanillaware's older games (I'm not going to go into Princess Crown, Grimgrimoire or the games that didn't get brought over here as I've still not got those games.) What I was really wanting to talk about was the recently announced Vanillaware titles, Dragon's Crown and Grand Knight History. We've known about Grand Knights History for a few months I think, but this is the first we've heard about Dragon's Crown, what will be Vanillaware's first HD game, releasing Spring 2012 on the PS3 and Playstation Vita. Sure, these games won't be for everyone, as the artstyle, particularly in Dragon's Crown could be described as grotesque and overexaggerated. Still, it looks gorgeous in places I think. Just see how smooth and vibrant it will run on the PS3. Grand Knights History will change things up quite a bit-it will be turn based :) Hopefully it works well.

Finally, check this retrospective from last year by one of my favourite youtubers. I actually had an idea to do a big blog post about Vanillaware's games a while back (before I saw his video) but never got round to it. So I guess this post kinda says a lot of what I might have.

Oh, on another note my Now Playing 'column' is on a bit of a hiatus...I'm thinking of changing it to another day from Sunday, or maybe to fortnightly so I'll always have at least a couple of games to talk about. I'll think about what I'm going to do with it.

I am dissapoint.

2011-06-10T00:12:00.012+01:00

Just a kind of mini-rant on the way things are going in the RPG genre of video games. I remember a couple months back being really interested in a few of the games that we now know more about. There seems to be a general trend of mainstreaming the genre. Let me quickly add to that before you close the tab. That isn't necessarily the thing that bugs me. There are some RPGs that would definitely be considered mainstream that are perfectly good games, I would say the Pokemon games and slowly more the Dragon Quest series are decent mainstream role playing games. It is the dumbing down and the blurring of genre boundaries that usually ends up annoying me more with games that could have done so well.

So I better give some examples of what I mean.

One of the best selling (I think) RPG franchises in the west currently, the Mass Effect games have been on a worrying downwards trend into generic, safe territory. The first one had some rather deep customisation options, a retarded (but deep) inventory system and some other aspects that would mean that it definitely is an RPG. Ok, I don't have problems with shooters, or games that are cross-genre, definitely not. In fact, I think a lot of the best games are those that manage to transcend boundaries successfully. But it seems with the movement to the 2nd ME game, they saw that Call of Duty games, Halo games, Gears of War games sell well and they decided to move more towards the shooter end of the spectrum, ditching some of the more hardcore RPG elements that really helped give the first game the feel it had. So it seems to me that the series is evolving, moving away from its roots. I may just be an old cynic, or one of those people who isn't too keen on change (I would say I'm ok with change) but I'm not 100% happy with the Mass Effect series and the way it is going. They are still excellent games, both of them though, don't get me wrong!

E3 has done little to dispel these concerns for me, with the announcement that ME3 will be using Kinect as an optional extra. Sure, its only for minor things like voice commands, but they've tried this in one of the Tom Clancy games (I think) before, and it really didn't work too well from what I heard. Kinect is interesting, but I think it is aimed more at a casual market, for easy to pick up and play games like Just Dance or Kinectimals and whatnot.

Some other recent examples might be Hunted: The Demon Forge, which was recently released on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. It looked like it would be a rather decent RPG, but it looks like a rather badly put together Gears of War clone with a fantasy RPG skin. Metacritic Link To be honest, I don't think this game is going to do very well. People have become a bit disinterested in the Gears of War games recently, I've noticed...so really who is going to want an more obscure version of them?

Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale and Dungeon Siege III looked like they could hit a sweet spot for me. Heavily loot-driven dungeon crawling type games. Recently I've been trying to find either a good Diablo esque game, either clones or one of the Diablo games themselves, I have both. So the best I could do was play a bit of Diablo II, its still at the top of the pack in my opinion. DnD: Daggerdale looks to have been really rushed out, and its getting some terrible reviews. Gamespot Link It also apparently has some game breaking bugs all throughout, especially in the multiplayer, which would have been a strong selling point of the game for me. Dungeon Siege III is one I've been interested in for a while now, as I played the first game in the series and was pleased with it. This one from what I've heard on a few podcasts and seen in videos seems to have been watered down slightly. It sounds more like the X-Men Legends games that were on consoles a few years back. So more co-op driven and hack and slashy and perhaps simplified. I'm really hoping this one doesn't dissapoint me.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning are two other games which really could be good if they change things up from games that have come before. Square Enix are capable of making decent games, even though things might not necessarily be as strong as they once were, so they could definitely do something with the mythology they've built up in FFXIII. I just hope they make some big changes from the first game, as there was a lot there that I didn't enjoy (even though I put in a lot of time to XIII, nearly platinuming it...)

Exercise overload...

2011-05-28T13:39:00.012+01:00

I just got back on home today after doing a rather intense cycle from Edinburgh to Glasgow along the Union canal and Forth and Clyde canal. The trip was around 55 or so miles which we did in one day. It took us about 8 or 9 hours including stops if I remember rightly.

We set off from Edinburgh in the car to get dropped past the busiest part of town around half 9 or 10 on Friday morning. The weather was quite good for the morning, but the canal paths were a bit more uncomfortable than the ones later on nearer Glasgow. But by the end of it, it didn't really matter, because I was really not enjoying it...the weather turned bad, with quite strong winds coming our way as well as constant drizzly rain which got heavier and heavier as the day went on... We had a few stops along the way, in Linlithgow for some lunch around 12ish and then through a 620m long tunnel (apparantely) in nearly pitch black alongside the canal to the Falkirk wheel (which I didn't realise was such a tourist attraction.) It is the only one of its kind in the world I think, but don't quote me on that, I'm far from an expert on rotating boat lifts XD To be honest, its probably the only reason anyone would want to go to Falkirk, no offence to people from there but its a bit of a shithole...actually, not as much as some of the parts of Glasgow we went through :p

So once we got their eventually, cycling through the rather annoying rain and wind, we only had about half an hour to get a shower and a bit of a rest before we had to get a taxi. My dad had already booked the taxi to take us up to the west end for a meal and stuff. So we were going to meet my cousin at the Ubiquitous Chip, a bar/restaurant in Ashton Lane in the West End. I knew this was bound to happen, but we got ID'd trying to get in and I hadn't thought of bringing my passport at all, it was back home...my brother James was the same, he didn't think it was necessary to bring it. After all, if it got lost or wet, we'd have to shell out for a new one. Yeah, so it was news to me that we were going out for a drink before the curry in Ashoka just across the wee lane. So I was pretty pissed I'd got ID'd, but after a minute or two, it was rather funny because my dad somehow managed to get us in by leading the bouncer to believe we were booked in for a meal upstairs. Silly people...this was an expensive bit of town, so a group of people with a dinner reservation was quite a lot of money they would be missing out on (if we had indeed been eating there..)

So once we had got across to the restaurant and started eating, I remembered how good the curries there can be (particularly the Peshwari Nan breads :D) so I ate lots of that and somehow started to feel really light headed and sick, dont know if it was because I had too much to drink on an empty stomach, it was too hot in the restaurant or if it was because of the exertion of cycling all that way and then eating, or some combination. I went and got some air and was feeling slightly better after that though.

So once we eventually got to the hotel, I was looking forward to getting a good sleep. I couldn't get to sleep for bloody ages, it was too hot and uncomfy in the room and the walls were really thin...eventually got to sleep after putting my ipod on to cut out the snoring and other noise (I'm a light sleeper.)

We could have cycled back half of the way, but I took the train back from Glasgow, I was feeling too achey to do much more cycling to be honest.

Some games that look rather awesome :D

2011-05-22T18:02:00.003+01:00

Just a quick post with some videos and stuff for a few games I don't want to miss out on.

Gungnir for the PSP is Sting's next game in their Dept. Heaven series. I really enjoyed Riviera and have the other games, which I will get round to playing at some point hopefully. This one looks like it should be pretty good.

Grand Knights History

The next game from Vanillaware, this one looks rather good, it even has an interesting looking character creation aspect. http://www.siliconera.com/2011/05/10/making-of-a-grand-knights-history-knight/

Now Playing - "Lurker of the toilets"

2011-05-22T12:49:00.000+01:00

Looking back, its been a long time since I last properly posted (way back to late March since I last did). I feel really bad about that...its just been a combination of uni work, internet problems, laptop problems and busyness I guess... but I'm determined not to let the blog die :D So, now that I've finished up my last exam for first year, I've had a bit more time on my hands and I should be posting on here more often, as long as my laptop doesn't pack in again or something...

I keep putting this off, either I forget or I am being too lazy...anyway, the list of games is growing that I need to talk about, as this post will be about the games that I've not only been playing this week, but over the past few weeks, as I've been MIA from these posts for a while now.

I bought Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS) ages ago, before I started uni in September I think, and I've been playing it on and off since then, but I finally finished it the other day! I really enjoyed it towards the end when I started really concentrating on it for a week or two.

Its the kind of game like Disgaea where you really need to have just it on the go. If you play other games at the same time, you can get through it, but it will be much slower in terms of progress. This game is really deep, there is a lot to do just in the main story, and it took me a good 82 or 83 hours in the end to get through. If you want to go tracking down all the extras like the sidequests, which I did quite a lot of and fusing demons for your team, it will take a lot longer to finish. So you get a lot for your money, which is good. For the import price I payed (around £35, I am definitely not dissapointed with it :p)

So a little about the game in case you are wondering what in the hell I spent so much time on the game doing, or in case you are still considering buying the game but are on the fence about it. It plays like a dungeon crawler type thing, with you exploring the various levels of the Schwarzwelt first person. You get into random, turn based encounters with enemies and can Fight them or Talk with them, entering brief conversations where you answer questions and can get money, items or the demon's alliance, after which you can use it as a member on your team. Pretty much the same system as some of the other Shin Megami Tensei games, with some differences. Once you get used to it, its quite manageable.

I bought a 3DS and Super Monkey Ball 3D (3DS) at launch, and as my first experience of the 3DS, I was quite impressed by how well it works. Saying that, I was actually getting slightly strained eyes and a bit of a headache when I was playing it. I'm not sure if that was just a coincidence though or maybe I figured out a good level for the 3D slider, because I haven't really been getting any problems since then.

Although, I am a bit dissapointed by the lack of 3DS games that came out at launch here. I figured this would be a sleeper hit, or be a bit overlooked. Turns out it didn't really sell as much as the other games, but it isn't quite as good as I remember Monkey Ball to be. The difficulty has been eased up on, perhaps to give all the kids introduced to Nintendo by the Wii and DS revolution a chance. It didn't take me too long to get through the main 'story.' I've not played the Monkey Fight (other than on multiplayer) or Monkey Race modes and I might go back to them at some point. I'm really ambivalent about the 3DS and this game, so I might trade it in and wait for Ocarina of Time. I also want the big Disgaea 4 edition, which will cost me a lot to import though. In fact, I even thought about selling the 3DS around launch time... Hopefully things will improve on Nintendo's newest console. There are plenty of good announced games though, like Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Cave Story, Bit Trip Saga, SMT games etc..

I downloaded and played a fair few different Ipod games, including Chaos Rings (Ipod), Nyan Cat, Plants vs Zombies (well, more watched my girlfriend play it, and was a bit of a backseat gamer, sorry! :P), Tiny Wings, Age of Zombies Lite, Dino Rush, Imaginary Range and Cut the Rope. I played little bits of those ones, Chaos Rings is cool apart from the puzzles-those are why I put it down, I actually couldn't get past one of the puzzles which they really don't give you any tips or really explain them at all...Nyan Cat is cool but I got the free version and I don't really think there is as much in it as the real version. Not too sure if I'll pick up the full one. Tiny Wings was apparantely as addictive as Angry Birds, but for me, it doesn't have as much variety, so I can see it getting old a lot quicker than other games. Its more for the Doodle Jump/Mega Jump obsessed crowds who like to improve on high scores. Cut the Rope is brilliant though, I found myself trying to get 3* in all the levels I had unlocked. Pretty nice idea for a puzzler game. Imaginary Range is really interesting. Its from Square Enix and one of the more unique games I've seen on the App store. Its half comic, half game with some really interesting art style. Best of all, it is free! So pick that up! Its rare to see reasonably priced Square Enix games on the App Store, so I don't see why this one is free.

Here and there, I played bits of Neverwinter Nights (PC) and Diablo II (PC), bringing back the old school WRPGs :D I'm still struggling in Neverwinter Nights, that game is damn hard to get used to. I started up a game with a Wizard using a range weapon, and I'm using what I think is the best way to play them, summon lots of guys, have a familiar and a follower to stop enemies from getting to me. Attacks of opportunity are really overpowered it seems... I actually made some progress though, I got the first of the monsters at the start killed. Diablo II is as awesome as always :D I'm in Act III with my elemental Druid, absolutely pwning everything that comes my way. Usually the council gives me some problems, this time they barely got any attacks in. I am kind of worried that when I get to Act IV though, when the bosses start becoming more resistant to Elements, I will have some difficulty... Might play some more bits and bobs of either slowly.

I played right through Vanquish (360), which I think is made by the same people that did Bayonetta. Its a mix of Gears of War and Lost Planet with some added craziness, like the jetpacks on the main character's knees, yeah JETPACKS on your knees XD

Its quite a short game, I finished it in 2 sittings over around 6 or 7 hours, which is around the right length I figure. Its a short, fun campaign with a rather bizarre story. Even the opening couple hours didn't make it any clearer to me. But then again, fans of shooters aren't always looking for the story to be the main strong point. Its worth a look if you see it cheaply. Definitely not as good as Bayonetta, but pretty good overall.

I also played all the way through Nier (360) after hearing ridiculously good praise in places and very average and poor reviews in other (more mainstream it could be said) places. So my thoughts in a nutshell? Average. However, there are plenty of brilliant moments in the game, the music shines all the way through, and some of the story moments are very well written and rather emotional in places. The core gameplay is rather MMO-ish crossed with some Devil May Cry type hack and slash combat (that gets very repetitive and old in my opinion.) However, the creators of the game werent pleased with leaving at that, they included lots of other little influences and references, which is quite amusing at times, even if they weren't done too well in places. You've got dungeons and sections of the game which are based on other games, such as the overhead(ish) Diablo dungeon, a Resident Evil style fixed camera dungeon and a visual novel style section where you go into a really well written dream world. Throw in some bullet hell type enemies and some 2D platforming and you've got a rather weird combination, which is pretty fun at times.

For me though, there were too many flaws...the gameplay gets really old. Even though you get some other weapon types later on, I found myself continuing with the one handed swords I was used to, they seemed most well balanced and easy to use. The quests are basically just boring backtracking fetch quests, the only reward you get for them being money. On top of those annoyances are the fact that you need to revisit the areas in the game each at least once. They really shouldn't have made me do that. Would a few extra areas of hurt? Bottom line is that its a lazy game and I really don't see why it got some talk of RPG of the year in places. That laziness could be argued to be apparent right down to the graphics. They do look outdated in all aspects. To me, the character designs are really bland as well. The main character is really ugly...

As much as it looks like I'm panning it, I did enjoy parts of the game. It even made me cry in one place. Its a short game, but to me it did drag a bit, and by the end, I just wanted to finish it... Still, I rated it 3/5. It has enough good points to balance out the bad ones.

I started up a game on Ys: The Oath in Felghana (PSP) after finishing Nier. Its very fast paced and the controls, particularly air control, took me a while to get used to. It frustrates me how you can't actually heal unless you are at a Save point though...It took me ages to realise I could abuse the Double Boost system to get health back when I'm really low, as I was nearly getting stuck in some dungeons by nasty enemies and not having enough health. The warp function is very useful actually, it speeds up the game even more.

So far though, I'm not really enjoying it as much as I did Ys Seven (PSP.) Its probably a combination of graphics (this one doesn't have very good graphics) and characters. Adol is dumb, as are most of the others. Although the game does have a pretty good script and soundtrack, I must admit. And once you get used to things, the gameplay is pretty solid, fun and fastpaced.

I FINALLY FINISHED Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP)! After playing it on and off for a good few months now, especially when I was at uni, because we could do coop, I am now finished the single player quests (not all of them, but the ones I needed to do). It took me absolutely ages, around 300 hrs to get to this point. I'm also really near G-Rank in the multiplayer Guild hall.

Its a pretty damn frustrating and tricky game, but if you are patient with it and get used to everything like the timing and upgrading weapons and armour, you can really have some fun with this game. I'm glad to have finished it though...I won't have to be addicted till the new one comes out here sometime towards the end of summer...

In fact, I was so caught up in the Monster Hunter thing at some points, that I went looking for MH clones, and it seems I got the wrong one...I got Lord of Arcana at launch, as Square Enix brought out a rather nice special edition for it. I should have got Gods Eater Burst instead, as I've heard its a lot better. Its become pretty rare already here...Another one I was really considering was the first Phantasy Star Portable on the PSP, as I don't know anything about the games and it was a fiver. So I figured if I tried it and didn't like it, I wouldn't have shelled out the more or less full price that the 2nd Phantasy Star Portable was priced at. I didn't get it though, so I'll see if its still there next time I go through to Glasgow.

My computer is no longer blow'd up...

2011-05-01T01:30:00.000+01:00

Gah...my laptop is still broken and its not even put in the shop yet..Its either just that I was bringing into uni without a proper laptop back and it got damaged, or more likely, the fact that it got tea spilt over it in uni...

Its got some kind of hardware problem, I think the RAM like last time, but not sure..

1st May: Yay! I got my laptop back a few days ago and it was indeed a problem with the RAM again. It cost me £85 to get a new stick put in now, and its working fine. I was a bit worried at first because it actually smelled of burning plastic, but that was probably just some initial crap inside, as it doesnt do that so much now.

Hopefully I'll be posting some more now! I've got my final exam for first year on the 4th of May..,that doesn't seem so far away now :'(

Now Playing - "Sticky Banana"

2011-03-27T12:13:00.001+01:00

Technology has deserted me over the past few days...My phone has been really acting up, it occasionally won't be able to call or text, and it takes a long time for some texts to reach me or reach the person I'm texting. So I got a new sim card and that seems to have helped, but its still not completely solved the problem. It'll still crash from time to time when I open the adress book and it will take anywhere up to an hour or two for some texts to reach me =(

After that, some tea got spilt on my laptop when we were being idiots in uni. So its stopped working now, but I'm not entirely sure if it is down to that or just me taking the laptop into uni without a proper case or bag. Its had this problem before, or at least something similar, when the RAM failed. I just had to get new memory put in and got to keep everything on the hard drive. I'm hoping its something similarly easy(ish) to fix this time round. It won't turn on at the moment, which is kinda why I am a bit late in writing this post >_<

My PSP charger also broke yesterday as well, so I'll either need to get a new one if I want to play any PSP, or wait for a bit till I get more moniez...but my phone and laptop take priority unfortunately...so maybe no Monster Hunter for a while..

Anyway, I played some more Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) this week, FINALLY got past the quest I had been stuck on for a good few months, the goddamn Urgent quest in High Rank with the Monoblos and White Monoblos. Good times! I'm a bit further into the 8 star quests now-think I just need to do the Yian Garuga and multiple Shogun Ceanataur quest to progress to the next urgent. Yian Garuga is bloody hard though.... Anyway, I won't be doing much more on this unless I can borrow someone's charger at uni.

I played a little bit more of Pokemon Black (DS) earlier in the week. I'm now up to about 7 badges, nearly at the town for the next one. My team is all around the lv45 mark more or less, still 5 pokes and I don't think I'll be able to find another useful pokemon for the last place. So it'll probably just remain as a space for a HM slave with something like Strength or Fly or something. Its been on hold for a few days though, but I think I'm going to be playing more of it now that my psp charger is fooked D=

I also picked up a 3DS at launch even though I was kinda ambivalent on the whole thing...more or less down to the amount of money it would cost and the (in my opinion) poor selection of games at launch. I thought I'd go for what I thought could be a bit of an overlooked and underappreciated game at launch, Super Monkey Ball 3D (3DS)

The previous ones I played from the series were actually pretty good, and this one is a bit easier and I'm quite impressed with the 3D visuals as my first experience of the 3DS. Probably next game I get will be either Street Fighter IV or the Ocarina of time remake/port. It does actually give me headaches after a while of playing it, so I usually have the 3D turned down to at least half.

I've played it for a couple hours so far and I've got about halfway through the challenges...although they are actually getting quite tough. I need to get a case for my 3DS otherwise I won't be playing much of this outside the house. I'll post again some time next week but my laptop is broken so don't know when exactly

Now Playing - "Phoenix Down"

2011-03-20T23:51:00.001Z

Another week flies by, and I've been juggling studying for the upcoming tests with the occassional bit of Pokemon when I get a chance. So I'm getting more into Pokemon Black (DS) now that I've progressed a bit further. The story has grown on me a fair bit. The whole thing going on with the legendary dragons is rather interesting, and it has given the world a bit more life and depth than the previous games where they didn't really tie the legendaries in at all to the story.

I've now got 7 badges and I've just flown back to the museum to have a chat with the Champion, the rivals and the other 'main' characters. I kind of forgot where they told me to go next...*epic facepalm* I'll figure it out next time I turn the game on... My team has been strengthened a bit as well, and I seem to be able to take out most types with the 5 I have now. I don't know if I mentioned last time that I was doing a mono-water challenge-essentially I can only use Pokemon with the Water type for the entire game. Although stuff like Water/non-water 2nd type is fine, to give me a bit more versatility.

Team is as follows at the moment:

Only, mine is the female Jellicent(on the far right), which is even more ugly...I really don't like many of these new pokes....

I was hoping to finish the game up before the end of the weekend, looks like thats not happening really...had too much studying to do for tomorrow's anatomy test D:

Other than that, I was intending to play some other stuff, either Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Ys: The Oath in Felghana, or Lord of Arcana (PSP), the latter of which I decided on, as I bought it at launch a few weeks back and have barely played it. Its a Monster Hunter clone which is pretty bland in places, but I think it has quite a bit of depth to it in places. It has lots of stats, which I can geek out over, and spend time grinding! :D There isn't much you can do in MH to grind other than farm items and money to improve your gear, but in this you can also level up and strengthen that way. So I like that about it, but the combat is still pretty repetitive, and there are a little too many reaction commands for my liking...I have slow reflexes... T_T

I got a bit further in the half hour or so today I played it for, I got past the Monolith boss quest that had me stuck for ages, with a lot of deaths...this game is hard...

Anyway, I'll try and post more frequently on here...I say that a lot..but I am trying to bring it back to where it used to be, with actual decent content and lots of interesting pictures, links, videos and whatnot.

Now Playing - "scalchop!"

2011-03-13T23:36:00.003Z

I've been away from the blog for a while now, but it was never going to truly die. I've had this blog too long to get rid of it now. Anyway, I've been pretty busy with university work and seeing people at uni, so I've not actually had much time to play games. That hasn't really stopped me from buying games, however, and March is a pretty expensive month for me, it looks like....
I've bought a few so far this month:
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
Hyperdimension Neptunia
Pokemon Black

And I have a few things preordered for later in the month and onwards:
Black 3DS console (not sure what games I will get yet)
Dissidia 012 : Final Fantasy
Dragon Age II (isn't preordered, for some reason I just wasn't getting it at launch)

Anyway, its basically just one game that has been taking up my time this week. I got Pokemon Black (DS) on launch day last Friday and I've been playing it quite a bit since. Not obsessively I'd say, but at least a little bit most days. One day I refrained from playing it at all so I could make some progress on my uni coursework. We've got a number of deadlines coming up. 2 essays, 2 class tests and a lab book to finish up and hand in. I've done both essays and most of the lab book(which I'll finish on Monday) so I'm slightly ahead of some people in the class. That means I can relax and play Pokemon! :D The others that have Pokemon are way ahead of me though, so I've got some catching up to do...

So my opinions on the new Pokemon games so far would be overall, slightly dissapointed. But only slightly...The main things I don't really like about them are the new pokemon. A lot of them are just really uninspired and bland. I mean, there is a generic dog and deer pokemon who look about as boring as can be. I should probably cut them a bit of a break, because they are up to 649 in the pokedex now, so they are bound to be running out of ideas. But should they really be dragging the series on for much longer? Some people believe not. I have some fun with the games even if I am going off the series slowly. This might just be because I overplayed some of them by going into the competitive side of breeding and training, but its partially down to the series' stagnation in a way.

Story wise, the game doesn't really do much new. Its the same idea as before, you play a kid who goes out adventuring with a pokemon in an effort to beat the Elite 4 and complete the pokedex. You end up entangled in Team Plasma's affairs. So far I'm a bit confused by the whole Team Plasma thing. Their motives are a bit wierd, and they seem really poorly organised, ending up doing random things which accomplish nothing. Its not like Team Rocket which you probably enjoyed watching in the series or the games, its different, Team Plasma fail more (and not in such awesome ways.)

I probably just need to play the game for a couple more hours, and wait till it grows on me. For all the criticism I've given it so far, I am enjoying it. It definitely looks good, with all it's 3D sequences and whatnot.

I'm playing through with an all-water team to make it a bit more challenging. This is bulking out my play time with some extra grinding, but I am liking the challenge that this provides. I've got 5 badges now, and moving towards the next town.

I'll try and post some more on the blog when I can. Its not dead yet! :D

Today...sigh

2011-02-16T00:50:00.003Z

Today was the most bullshit day I've had in quite a while now. Its not just me being an emo bitch either, a lot of the class were in foul, depressed moods as well. We were in uni 9-5 with 1 hour free..thats not the worst part though. We had 2 seperate 2 hour labs, one for Applied Optics, and one for Visual Optics. We also had an Anatomy Class test which I had only started revising for the night before (thats my fault, I know). The exam questions were fucking hard, and I was backed up on that by people who had studied a lot. Apparentely it didn't matter how much you studied, because some of the questions were worded in ways which made them trick you, or even fail to understand what is meant.

I got home at like 7ish and worked until midnight as well, in an effort to make up for my lack of work at the weekend, and guilt at not doing enough of my uni stuff. See the last post for some of the shit I've been putting off for a while.

A whole bunch of other stuff wasn't going for me either today. Hopefully tomorrow is better. Urgh...I really don't want this blog to turn into something I use solely to bitch...I just needed somewhere to vent the recent pressure. I seriously think something is wrong with me, both physically (I've got some illness, probably stress induced) and mentally.

Way too much stuff to do....

2011-02-14T22:46:00.003Z

Just to say I won't be posting anything about what I've been playing during the last week. I had some time for games, but from Thursday-Sunday I ended up staying at a friend from uni's house and drinking, playing a few multiplayer games, pool and other stuff. So while it was pretty awesome and seemed like a good idea, it left me with a big backlog of uni work to do. I've only had a couple hours to study for my Anatomy class test tomorrow, finish the Visual Optics lab report, catch up on the lectures I missed, the tutorial I left early from today, the Applied Optics lab writeup I still haven't finished from last week, write and email the minutes for the last Cali-Otaku commitee meeting, phone the uni eye clinic to book a second appointment and a whole load of other stuff.

Bleh...all that added to the depressing day that is Valentine's day (if you are single) plus the rain made today pretty shit. At least I had fun slacking off during the weekend with some friends.

Hopefully I'll get back into my normal rythm soon.

Time eater..

2011-02-09T23:47:00.004Z

Seriously, there aren't ever enough hours in the day when you are working or at university. I try to have a list of main things somewhere loosely in my mind each week or day, and I usually get the main priorities done in time, but I never seem to have enough time to put in time to smaller things like a bit of studying each day, reading my notes, watching tv, playing games or writing here. Those things seem to get kicked down a couple notches when I have other stuff like lab reports to do.

I'm in uni 9 to fuckin 6 tomorrow...wtf...I'll need to study throughout the day at uni and some tomorrow night as I've got a Test on Tuesday which I've not started revising for... T_T

I need a hyperbolic time chamber. Cookie to whoever knows what thats from.

Now Playing - "Are you hurt anywhere? Face, chest, ovaries?"

2011-02-06T23:52:00.001Z

I've been trying to bring back my hardcore RPG self from the perilous casualness that comes with owning an IOS device, and I played some rather awesome games this week.

First person dungeon crawler RPGs have a really nice appeal to me actually. I don't know why that is, as I never really played many of them when I was young. So its not really true nostalgia for them, its probably just as they feel fresh, yet nice, oldschool and hardcore to me. So I'm trying to pick up a few of these type of games and break into the genre. Dark Spire might be next on my to buy list in terms of FPS RPGs, its been sitting in one of the game stores in town for a while now, reduced way down. Pretty good for an imported game. I'll check if its still there some time this week. Anyway, I put some more time into Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS) mainly over the weekend. I'm still in the fourth sector, Delphinus...so progress is slow, but at least there is some now that I've finished Golden Sun 1 and 2. Anyway, I made sure to try and improve my demons in the 5 or so hours I played of this over the weekend. I managed to get all the necessary demons for the Special Fusion of Black Frost! =D Awesome! I added a few more to my party that were of decent levels and stats, which helped a fair bit. The story is one of the main aspects I am enjoying the game actually, as well as the characters and the choices you take(even if they have been rare so far). I like a good bit of sci-fi, and this game has a pretty dark, tense and thrilling feel to it. There are some generally creepy moments (The first similar piece of media that comes to mind is the movie called the Thing), which is impressive for a text-driven story and one with static character portraits and arguably fairly limited graphics. I'm getting near the end of Delphinus I think, based on the mission log at least, there are some really overpowered abilities that some of the enemy demons have. One such ability that made me stay away from Strange Journey on Monday(in addition to having uni) is 'Bite the Dust.' I think it works as a status effect designated by a bomb it looks like. It seems like if the demon with the status dies, it takes out the entire rest of the team near enough. It might as well if it doesn't, as the hurt it puts on the rest of the team is brutal. Well...I got 2 game overs in less than an hour to these bastards using this ability, so I put it down for now. I'll try and forget about it and go back to this game in a few days. I also dabbled in a bit of grinding in Etrian Odyssey (DS) while waiting for the Superbowl to start up on Sunday. Its painfully slow, even if it can be pretty simple fun. Its also bloody hard..Anyway I've got a mini-aim for myself before I can progress. I've got to get my team up to lv20 before I attempt the first sanctum boss again. I'm currently at around 17 across the board at the moment.

Earlier in the week I finally finished up Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) as I said above. I had been wanting to finish it 100%, getting all the Djinn, Summon Tablets etc and I made good progress towards that goal. It took me a fair bit of time to get through the last couple dungeons, but I managed them without too much difficulty. So at the moment I've got all the Djinn, thats 72 Djinn that you can get if you import your data from the first game. I also got all but one of the Summon tablets, as I need to beat Dullahan, who is pretty fuckin gay. He is a lot stronger than the final boss(who I gotta say, I was expecting a 2nd battle against in some different form) like Deadbeard in GS1. I can get him pretty close to death by summon rushing(cheap I know..) but when he does Djinn storm and drains all my Djinn, I lose my main Psynergy such as Cool Aura(for a lot of healing across the party). There is probably a way to do it by abusing the Djinn that protect you with shields, but the damage he fires out after Djinn storming is brutal. Nasty boss. I reckon I can beat it if I get a bit of luck or really take my time to plan and calculate though.

I played some more of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) after playing a little bit of multiplayer at uni. I got my full Hypnocatrice set of armour actually. I wanna go to sleep now, so thats all I can be bothered saying right now...I was supposed to have this posted on Sunday, its now nearly Tuesday T_T

Roguelikes are another subgenre of RPGs that I've been trying to get into. I admit I've never really played much of the games in the genre but I've heard a few things about them, and the genre always interested me. They have their roots in games such as Rogue(where the name comes from) and Nethack. Nethack is one of the games which a lot of current roguelikes take inspiration from. It turns out there are a couple roguelike style games on the Apple App store, so I downloaded iNethack (Ipod) for free and played a little bit of it. Its hard to get used to at first, as I ascended the first set of stairs and ended up escaping the dungeon. Thats doing it wrong however, its more like Diablo in that you have to just keep descending further into the dungeon to progress. Less forgiving however, so if you die, its all over and you have to start again. I've played a handful of times and the furthest I got to was the 4th floor of the dungeon. I'm definitely interested to try more of these games, so I'm open to recommendations/suggestions. I'm thinking ZHP could be a good interesting entry title, as I like NIS's quirky sense of humour.

Now Playing - "Whack a Shakalaka"

2011-01-30T23:10:00.005Z

Its been kind of a wierd week actually. Our tutorials and labs are starting up and things are starting to get a bit more busy now at university. And I've been kinda hit or miss when it comes to playing games this week. I've not been largely impressed with either of the games I'm currently playing. Quite often I'd try and find other stuff to do with my time like chatting with people at uni and stuff other than play games. Still, I put in some more time to Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) which is still pretty fun, even if it is quite hard at the stage I am at now. I'm on the first set of Nekoht's quests, the 7 star ones and there are some that I find way too hard. The double Congalala would be one I thought wouldn't give me problems, but the thing is, their damage is much higher than normal. Add to that a Bulldrome (not hard on their own, but mega annoying when it is in the same area as the Congas) and you've got a nasty quest I reckon. I've tried that one a couple times and most times it has taken 1 of my lives within minutes. Other than that one, the Basarios doesn't seem hard in terms of attacks but it becomes hard when you consider it's health. So its more of a challenge to outlast it and do enough damage before running out of time or Hot Drinks. I reckon I can manage the Basarios if I try out some different weapons and perhaps armour sets.

I've been trying to farm against some weaker monsters such as Rathalos (in the Guild hall) for some items. I managed to kill Teostra or Lunastra (whichever is the Blue one) as it keeps it's health when you beat it. So after smashing it's horn with a Dragon attribute weapon in the first quest, it couldn't use the Flame aura. Easy pickings. So now I've got some more Elder Dragon bones and all the Flame Dragon scales I need for the next upgrade to my Djinn SNS-up to Blazing Falchion.

Also this week I improved my Kirin armour a fair bit with all the money I was making. I got it up to lv12, giving some pretty good Defense and I got enough Kut-Ku Ears to make the 5 Psychic Vision gems for the set. Its my first time using the Autotracker skill~I can see why it is so useful to have. Next up I need to finish off a few 7* quests required to unlock the next urgent which I believe is Monoblos and White Monoblos-they aren't nearly as intimidating as Diablos was to me. Black Diablos have a shitload of health...I hope this one isn't a repeat of that quest that put me off for weeks.

Other than that, I picked up my save on Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) as I was getting near the end of the game. I had intended to finish the game before I started back at uni. While I got close, I'm pretty sure I ran out of time/got distracted. So I put in couple more hours to this, mostly at the weekend really, and I am now up to final dungeon, in fact I've done the final dungeon (its long...) and just need to either a) finish the game or b) go and do some optional stuff to get the final 3 Djinn and couple summon tablets, as well as finish the optional dungeons before going to the endgame stages.

Wow...that was rather boring most likely. I've put some videos of some soundtrack picks I noticed recently.

I think the Hypno theme reminds me of Diablo II slightly, most likely the Act II music from that game.

Cali Otaku semester 2

2011-01-26T22:01:00.005Z

We now know what anime we are watching this semester (including the 2 series me and the others on the commitee decided on last week)

The lineup looks like this:

Baka To Test: to Shōkanjū – 12 episodes

Angel Beats! – 13 episodes

My little sister can’t be this cute – 13 episodes

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun – 24 episodes(2nd half of series)

I had forgot that I had watched the first few eps of Angel Beats already, and I remember that I quite liked the idea of it. In fact, I don't know why I stopped watching it...out of these new ones, its probably the one I am most interested in. Railgun started off quite slowly from ep14 and 15, or maybe it was just that I was getting tired and bored towards the end when we showed it. We watch 2 episodes of each series each week, and ocassionally the odd random episode thrown in at the end if we have time. Today though....it was something rather wierd suggested by one of the members. Its called Koe de Oshigoto! Its rather ridiculously explicit, so its probably a good thing our president turned it off before it got too far in. We were kinda paranoid that someone from the uni would walk into the lecture theatre and get us expelled/take away the society privileges or whatever.

I'm quite liking the anime we are showing this time round, at least so far. We shall see how it goes. I might write some Impressions of them at some point. I'm also 2 episodes into Full Metal Panic, considering continuing it. So I might write about it also.

I'm getting a wierd sense of de ja vu about Angel Beats...I'm sure I wrote about it before. *checks*

Now Playing - "Big, pointy spears."

2011-01-23T22:44:00.002Z

Early in the week I was playing some more of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) but not really getting anywhere. I'm still on the start of the High Rank quests, I've unlocked 7 star and done a few of them but I usually end up getting badly violated when I try any of the hunt quests. I've also been trying to get a total of 5 Kut-Ku Ears to go into Psychic Vision Gems for my Kirin set of armour. I've managed to smash enough to get 4/5 so far, but I've put the game down in the last few days, partially out of boredom, partially due to uni and partially down to frustration at the difficulty/my suckiness. I need to get a whole bunch of money to upgrade my armour as High Rank is a bit of a difficulty spike, and one that is slowing my progress down as lot.

I didn't do anymore of MH co-op in uni, as the other guy had got stuck at the same bit I was stuck at for ages, the Four Horns quest where you need to hunt Diablos and Black Diablos. Instead, he had picked up Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS) so we played some multiplayer on that. I'm really tempted to start playing it again, as I really enjoyed that game and I've still got absolutely tonnes of grinding and postgame stuff left.

So its more been a week where I've just played games here and there, mostly on my Ipod when I get a chance. I downloaded Angry Birds (Ipod) after a recommendation from a friend. Man, this game is addictive! Really well worth the price of £0.59 I'd say, as you get around 10 worlds to play through. I'm still on the first one (2nd page of levels) and liking how its going so far. Really random and funny puzzle game, I guess you'd call it.

I finished up Infinity Blade (Ipod) finally, after around 6 generations. Annoyingly, I didn't get the achievement as I've still not set up my Ipod to get the internet at my cousin's place where I'm staying at the moment. I'm far from an achievement whore, but its just I don't know if I can actually get that one now, and thats like...the one that proves you've finished the game. I guess its just me being a pedantic ass. Still, I enjoyed the game at times, but I was forced to play it in small chunks of time as the Ipod does heat up quite a bit, and the controls seem to be a little fiddly at times. This leads to some immense frustration when you try and parry an attack when you are wanting to simply block it. This usually leads to painful death. The game has some really nice sharp graphics and textures, and a fair amount of customisability. I liked buying and improving my gear. I still didn't figure out what mastering items did other than giving you +1 into your stats (very useful at times.)

I also picked up Bit. Trip Beat (Ipod) - I had seen some of the Bit. Trip games on a stream and I was kind of interested, but I think it did look quite hard. I think it was Bit. Trip Runner that I had seen, not sure though. There were some really good reviews for this one though, at least on the Ipod and I liked the look of it, so put down the 59p for it. I've tried it once so far and I quite like the way it works. Its a rhythm game where you use a Pong type paddle to return the beats to the other side and progress. Its REALLY trippy. I was playing at night just before I went to sleep and it tired my eyes out really quickly, as I had to focus quite a lot on the game. I quite like stuff that has an interesting twist on rhythm in games, I like Gitaroo Man as it was one of the first I played, and I like stuff like Space Invaders Extreme as well, as the gameplay in that is well integrated and linked with the soundtrack. I think I'll enjoy this one, I've gotten a bit bored of all the generic Guitar Hero type games coming out.

I also tried out Flying Hamster Free (Ipod). One genre I'm wanting to get into more is 2D sideshooters, this one looks quite cute and simple, but I still suck at it. Its far from the awesome but ridiculous difficulty of Ikaruga, but I am quite intrigued by this. Again, the only thing turning me off is the slightly higher than normal price point of the full game. Not sure if I'll grab this one.

I was a big fan of the Space Invaders Extreme games, so I'd wanted to try the newer one that recently came out on a few platforms. I picked up Space Invaders Infinity Gene Lite (Ipod) just because of a few average reviews on IOS and the higher price point for the full game of £2.99. You really don't get a lot in this free version, which was a bit dissapointing. I wasn't hugely impressed with what I'd played either, I think I might pick Infinity Gene up on another platform if I am to buy it some time. To be honest, I think the poor reviews are for the Lite version and not the full version.

It looks a bit like I am turning into a casual gamer :O ! Of course, this'll never be true. I'll play something nice and hardcore this week.

1UP's worst videogame boxart from 2010

2011-01-22T16:10:00.001Z

Awesome link from over at 1up. Keep reading (or skip) to the last one, thats one of the ones that gave me most laughs, partially down to the comments.

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3183101

Anime shiz ~ Semester 2

2011-01-19T22:07:00.002Z

Remember back a few months ago I said I had joined up with the Anime society at my uni and joined the commitee for it? Its a fairly good laugh, the society. Some of the people I get on with quite well on some level of mutual geekiness somewhere or another. I didn't really focus on watching many of the shows we screened last semester, even if I did go along to [most of] the screenings.

Now that our term has started up again, I'm gonna try and put forward some better suggestions for series to screen this semester. The way that it is decided what is watched is by a 'pilot battle' week and a commitee meeting, both of which are this week. We just had the screening of the series and the theme this time round seemed to be more obscure stuff, with a lot of quite interesting looking anime, as well as the usual comedy/ecchi stuff.

The list of episodes was like this:

Legendary Gambler Tetsuya

Mitsudomoe

Full Metal Panic

Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu

Sailor Moon Live action

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun

Kuragehime (The Jellyfish Princess)

Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit

Denno Coil

[I might be missing some, but I can’t remember]

Out of those, we ended up rechoosing Railgun as we never managed to finish it last semester, I forget how...and Baka to Test. I wanted FMP as well as Baka to Test, but I did enjoy Railgun and it'll be good to watch more of. So this Friday we'll have the last 2 series that'll be screened this semester.

Oh, for those of you interested in ongoing and new anime, Anime news network have their Winter 2011 Preview up here. They usually do these each season and I look at them ocassionally but never get round to watching anything. Maybe this time. I've more or less been out of anime for a while now, at least at home. I don't know why exactly, I just haven't been watching much recently. I'm thinking of starting up Full Metal Panic though.

Now Playing - "I heard a rumour that you're an idiot, is there any truth to that?"

2011-01-16T21:47:00.001Z

I start back at uni tomorrow, which is always stressful for me, as I'm always nervous I won't be able to readjust my body clock to early starts. I've been practicing going to sleep a bit earlier than normal and getting up earlier for the past couple days. Then again, I stress out way too much about the stupidest things... ;_; I mean I am looking forward to going back to uni as well because I've started getting bored with not enough to do in my days off. A month is probably a little bit too much for a Christmas holiday (its more than I'm used to, or perhaps its just I've had way too many of these Christmas breaks already at school and uni beforehand...)

I've been trying to move on with my save of Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA) and finish it up by the time I start back at uni. I got a bit sidetracked and bored at times, but I am still enjoying this game. I'm now on the second bit of the world map that you can unlock, at the Shaman's village about to do the road of trials. This is as far as I've been in the game I believe. I didn't get this far when I first played the game originally. There is so much more to do in this game than in the first game, definitely. And to be honest, I've been using a guide a little bit more than I would normally do with a game, but for some reason I want to 100% complete this game as I did so in the first, transferred my data via a Gold password (I actually have a GBA cable but couldnt find a second console) so I can get a total of 72 Djinn in this game I think. So I'm going for that, as well as the optional quests and whatnot. I don't know if I'll be able to get all the items in the game on this playthrough, but I'm trying to get as many as possible.

Towards the end of the week, I started up my file on Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) again. I had put the game down a month or two ago because I was stuck on quest with 2 Diablos, one normal and one of the Black variant. It was a bit of a wall for me because I had got more or less as strong weapons as I could get with the quests I had unlocked. My armour could always use some work, but I had upgraded my Blango set pretty far as it stood. So I eventually got past that after trying a few different things, Sonic Bombs, Flash Bombs, Traps and Tranq bombs to catch them. I managed to catch the Black one after whittling it's massive amount of health down with my Princess Rapier to try and poison it when I could. It(and most monsters) seems to get poisoned when they are vulnerable. In this case, when you Sonic Bomb it out of the ground. I had tried an Ice attribute sword and shield, and use it to cut their tails off, but I didn't have massive success with reaching the tails with the rather short range of the SnS. So other than Ice, poison is fairly effective in killing the Black Diablos, or at least taking some of it's health away.

Anyway, now that I've beaten that quest, I am stuck once again. This time on Shen Gaoren, the final Urgent quest from the Village Elder in MHFU. I've been using Sword and Shield the entire time through the game as its a fairly good beginner's weapon set choice. I'm really struggling with doing enough damage to Shen in the time limit I have for this quest. SnS is one of the weakest weapon types in the game, but I like it as it is fairly well rounded. It is fast, light, defensive and has a pretty good range of elemental and status weapons. So I've been trying out a few other options, such as buffing my attack, using extra ballista shots and a whole bunch of bombs, large, small and bounce types. I can get his legs bright red and make him fall, but finishing him off before he nukes the town is proving rather tough...I've tried making bowguns as it is one of the easiest ways to take him down, but I'm a bit of a newb at those. I've not decided if I'm gonna concentrate on blademaster weapons such as my SNS, forge a hammer or go into HBGs for this guy. Ideally I'd like to just continue on with my trusty sword and shield and go through the entire game with just the one type of weapon.

I'll catch up with my friends in uni tomorrow and ask the one guy who got me into Monster Hunter in the first place about Shen. Hmm, I tried out a Hammer after watching a few videos and managed to do the Shen Gaoren rather easier. The damage it puts out makes it cower down a lot more often, which is crucial for preventing damage to the town it seems.

Cladun 2 (Classic Dungeon X2)

2011-01-11T17:09:00.001Z

Link

New ideas for features.

2011-01-10T22:54:00.006Z

I've been thinking of writing a few features on the blog. They will most likely be a series of posts with a common theme or goal to them.

1) Retrospective series on old game series.

In these, I was thinking I would do a maximum of 3 games in each retrospective, and talk about my experiences of the first hour of each game (and the game as a whole, although I'd just be playing the first hour of each). Also in there would be a bit of history on the series and why exactly I do or do not like the games. They will of course be games that I've played already so that I can talk in depth about them. I'd like to talk about the 3 games and how they link together perhaps, influence one another and other games in the genre (or other genres as the case may be)

They might be parts of series, or maybe entire series if I can play the main games within the 3 game limit.

My ideas for which games to play as part of this series so far are:

The Final Fantasy series (namely the PS1 'trilogy' of FFVII, VIII and IX)

The Castlevania series (perhaps the GBA or DS metroidvanias as there are 3 of each)

I'm open to other suggestions for series that you want me to cover. It'd be better if the games are some that I've finished. Failing that, you can suggest games for me to pickup and do some posts on. A list of the games I have can be found here. Final note would probably be that they will most likely be RPGs, but not necessarily. They aren't the only thing I play (nearly though =p)

2) IOS buyer's guide for RPGs.

This was the one I just came up with after having a look around the (at times hard to navigate) Apple App Store. Basically the idea will be to compile a list of must have titles for a genre. I'm more than likely going to be doing this on RPGs, as they are my favourite genre. I've found that since receiving an Ipod Touch 4th gen at Christmas, the App store can definitely be hard to find what you are looking for. It has a few different ways in which they sort things, but you really need to do a lot of browsing and searching to find things. I couldn't really find something along the lines of a list of the top RPGs available on the net. So, I will try out as many interesting looking games for the IOS and attempt to compile a guide which might help people with similar tastes find decent games.

Alternatively, I could try this on other platforms as well, such as the DS (which many will be holding off on buying now, but they will of course continue to sell like hotcakes)

3) Top 5 Features.

Yeah these have been done to death on the internet, whether it be in blog format, video format or whatever else. Still, I find them quite interesting to read through, to see other people's preferences for favourite games, or specific aspects within games.

I have a few ideas for top 5's; the one I want to work on most is Top 5 games with outstanding art styles. Thats my arty side coming to the surface. =p I'm more than likely going to stay away from soundtracks. Even though I'm quite into music in general, I can never decide on entire soundtracks and the order in which I would rank them. I'm really indecisive, so that doesn't help me putting together lists, top 3's or top 5's.

Hopefully I've described these musings of mine in a remotely interesting fashion, furthermore, I hope I can actually find time to bring some of them to fruition. *Evil laugh* >:)

Now Playing - "I can happily declare that the 'Cake' is not a lie!"

2011-01-09T23:58:00.002Z

I meant, as always, to post this on Sunday, but I ended up staying over at a friend's place, having a few beers and playing some games online. So anyways, better late than never I guess =p We were playing Super Street Fighter IV, Halo Reach, Blazblue: Continuum Shift on XBL multiplayer for a bit of a laugh. I'm surprised by how sound the people on Blazblue are. Usually, a lot of the games on Xbox Live are full of 13 yr old kids who swear at you in undecipherable high pitched screams [One reason I don't generally like Xbox Live.] But after 2 games in a row online, our opponents sent us messages saying good game, or something equivalent. We got chatting to one or two of them, including one guy who had a Castlevania reference in his name, so I had to praise them on that! XD

[Possible spoilers, I'll try to keep em to a minimum though.]

I finished up the last few chapters of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (PS3) this week. I had heard that ending was described as wierd and "wtf" by quite a few people online. And to be honest, I can kind of see what they meant. It is indeed a departure from the norm for the series. Still, despite all the games minor flaws and annoyances for me, I definitely enjoyed playing it. It has some amazingly atmospheric areas and I like how they build up the story and mythology with the cutscenes, scrolls, bestiary type thing and narration, it adds to the depth of the game. Some parts of the game seem a bit unneccesarily drawn out, towards the end, the game doesn't really do a good job of why you go to certain areas. The story could really be considered one of the weak points in this game, as could be the music. For me, the soundtrack doesn't stand up to some of the others in the series-this one seems too ambient and quiet. That might be partially down to the sound effects in the game overriding it. I'd have to get a look at the soundtrack before I make my final verdict on it.

My favourite areas were probably some of the ones where you are in the Vampire's Castle around the middle of the game. It has some amazing backdrops, especially when you are outside and see the entire castle exterior. I might do some more of this game on another difficulty in preparation for the DLC; Reverie and Resurrection, which come out in a few months. I'll save the more spoiler heavy stuff for then, possibly including a review if I can find time.

I played some Ipod Touch stuff when Golden Sun had been pissing the hell out've me. I actually finished up Infinity Blade and Plants vs Zombies. Plants vs Zombies is pretty damn awesome, even though it does drag and get a tad repetitive in places. I just love the quirkiness it has. It really shines through in the ending credits song. I'll embed it below, don't worry, there are no spoilers for the *cough* story. But if you haven't finished the game, play through it yourselves and see what you think. Good fun game, definitely recommended. You can get it on mostly every platform now I think, minus DS, Wii and PSP. Infinity Blade is one of the most talked about IOS apps mainly for the graphical prowess. It really taxes the Ipod Touch 4th gen that I'm playing it on, seriously, the thing started heating up like I hadn't seen before. Graphically it definitely looks nice, I give it that. The lighting and textures are very well done, but when it comes down to it, it is mostly a point and click environment you can move the camera across. That was pretty much the only way they could probably have got away with this level of graphics I think. Gameplay wise, I'm a little let down by it. I don't really like the combat, which is more or less like Punch Out, so I've heard. You can hold left or right to dodge and you can block or parry. Those are your defensive skills, then you've got the standard attacks, mega attacks, super attacks and magic as your offensive options. I think thats it, its pretty smooth stuff in combat, but I can see it getting old fast. To be honest, I don't know if I've finished the game yet. Its Bloodline 1 which I've done, I think it counts as 1 playthrough even though I didn't beat the endboss. What happens is you get pwned, and your descendants carry on where you left off, with your level and gear. Its a fairly short game(only 10 or so enemies per playthrough), but I don't particularly feel short changed in any way. The graphics and opportunity to try this out are both well worth what I payed. I got it for half price at £3.50. I'll definitely be playing more of this and PvZ in the future, doing more playthroughs. I like the whole pick up and play in short bursts idea of gaming that the IOS devices give you. I've also got Chaos Rings (apparantely a fairly lengthy RPG) and a few others to take up my time when I go back to uni.

I continued on my save game on Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA). I really don't remember that much of the game actually. So it has been cool revisiting some of the areas in the game that I went through last time I played the game a few years ago when the game came out. I never actually finished it. I think I got stuck on some puzzle involving the boat. Which is my next point. The game is definitely harder than the first. I've died more than a handful of times in battle, and definitely got stuck on some of the puzzles, which on one hand, are much better disguised. They succeed in blending interactive objects into the world slightly better than the first game. On the other hand, some of the puzzles are really not intuitive, and some are just downright poorly designed. It shouldn't really be a negative that puzzles are tricky, because they should be. Just some of the design in this game seems a bit questionable. There is a real lack of direction sometimes. They'll just neglect to tell you where to go. Its like they want me to pull up the FAQ again. Then when I do find out where to go, its apparantely back halfway across 1 or more continents on the world map. So it doesn't have a very good flow to the game, in my opinion, especially on the world map and where you have to go next.

Then there are some of the dungeons. They are fairly well designed for the most part, some seem a bit long, moreso than necessary. For example, Air's Rock is a dungeon around 6-7 hours in roughly. It is apparantely the longest dungeon in the game, and is very long in comparitive RPG terms. There shouldn't be such a long dungeon this early in the game, that much should be obvious.

In the dialogue, it is quite interesting for the most part. The story is quite intriguing to me as I never actually finished it. They have set up quite a well fleshed out mythology which is quite nice and simple. Simple but effective, having 4 elemental powers and a host of Psynergies derived from them and different cultures and civilisations becoming powerful as a result of these. Some of the conversations with NPCs are a bit too long, ie. the one on the boat with the pirates and 2 lots of townspeople. They can be slightly drawn out, and in fact frustrating at times. I don't like that they give you choices between yes and no when only one of them is accepted. Sometimes you'll be pressing No and the party or the NPCs that decide you really meant Yes.

As much as I am tearing this game a new one, I am enjoying it. It has some amazing graphics for the age of the game, these were one of the selling points of the Golden Sun games back in the GBA days and its a fairly nice throwback RPG in many ways. It has quite an oldschool feel to it.

Disgaea 4~more info

2011-01-07T02:39:00.000Z

Now Playing - "An evil desert? Is that even possible?"

2011-01-02T21:08:00.010Z

I meant to post this yesterday(Sunday) but completely forgot. I went out for a while to the pub with some people from school that I hadn't seen in ages. Pretty good to catch up with them again after so long.

Anyway, I've been making some progress in games, finishing the main stories of 2 games, albeit rather short RPGs...so here are some of my musings.

Finally...I finished Dragon Warrior Monsters (GB). I've had this game for quite a while now after a friend sent me it randomly for a birthday a while back. He knows me pretty well, and I hadn't even told him that I had played the 2nd one of these games but never saw the first anywhere, and he sent me it up. He had played through a fair bit of it, but I dont think he had finished it. Compared to Dragon Warrior Monsters 2, there are definitely some balancing issues, this one seems harder a) to grind in and b) to breed a good selection of monsters early on. Still, once I had got past the ridiculously long late game dungeons (the longest one is 29 floors, and then a couple back to back strong bosses) I had access to a good selection of monsters and good places to grind, so managed to bring my team just up to speed for the final battle. I like in some ways the simplicity of the games. They remind me of the early pokemon days, where it doesn't matter about EV training, stats are determined in other ways, mostly by breeding, which you can put various degrees of effort into understanding and using. These games are kind of cheap for the carts only, so I'd definitely recommend trying them out if you like the pokemon games, the dragon quest/warrior games, or the more recent Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker games (they are basically the same idea and have wi-fi online as well...something is still keeping me away from Joker though, I've not tried it.)

I started up a New game on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (PS3) earlier in the week. I chose the Easy difficulty, which is a bit unusual for me...I usually choose at least normal if I have a choice, but I figured, I get trophies for all difficulties but more than that, I suck pretty bad at Action games like this, so went for Easy. It seems to be a good fit so far, its not far too easy, some of the fights give a fair bit of a challenge (namely the Titan bosses, which are Shadow of the Colossus inspired battles.) I'm enjoying the game for the most part, its got a really nice Castlevania atmosphere and feel to it in places, but it does seem different in many ways. I'm not entirely sold on some of the stuff-it highlights objects you should be looking for, for example ledges, or objects you can interact with your whip analogue, the combat cross. So it doesn't really let you do it for yourself. On one hand, it means you won't really get stuck, but on the other hand it does feel like they think the player is too idiotic and has to be told everything to do... The enemies are not too interesting, they are fairly generic so far, but I'm really impressed with some of the graphics and areas you visit. The game looks amazing. I'm currently on chapter 8/12 and going to try and finish the game before the end of the week. Lost series 6 is taking priority in my PS3 right now though, so its slightly on hold til I finish Lost up. No spoilers by the way! I tried to isolate myself from everyone else who had finished it way back when it aired in the US, I prefer waiting for the DVDs and marathonning the shit out of series like this. =D

I finished up Golden Sun (GBA) this week, doing Crossbone Isle and then going on to the final stages of the game. Its very easy...I don't think I died more than once the entire playthrough. I realised that I've done Crossbone Isle before, last time I played through the game. I also imported my save data for Golden Sun: The Lost Age. I'm going to play through it next probably. At times I really enjoyed playing through this game again, but at other times, some of the dialogue seems needlessly padded out and rather annoying. I definitely enjoyed it more back when it came out, but it has been pretty cool to revisit this game after a few years. I'm a bit dissapointed at how short the game is, even to 100% finish everything, it wont take you more than 40 hours probably. I'm not actually too sure on certain things, like what the level cap is, because you can import your levels as you take data to the 2nd game.

Valkyria Chronicles artbook

2011-01-02T01:15:00.005Z

I'm slightly stunned actually, it seems Udon Entertainment, one of the few companies outside of Japan involved in artbooks for games and anime, is bringing out a translation of the Valkyria Chronicles artbook, Valkyria Chronicles: Design Archive.

http://parkablogs.com/node/3766

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781926778167/Valkyria-Chronicles-Design-Archive?b=-3&t=-20#Fulldescription-20

I was browsing through the Book Depository's site and stumbled across this for preorder. I'll definitely be picking this up, as I love the artstyle in VC, and this saves me having to shell out for an imported Japanese copy of the artbook. Plus it'll be in English!

2010's gaming progress

2011-01-01T17:54:00.004Z

Happy New Year everyone! Hopefully you've all been having a good holiday season so far, and I hope you have a good year of 2011.

In my eternal quest to finish my backlog of games, I've been tracking my progress on the backloggery, a site designed for people to record their collections and get to know other people with similarly perilous amounts of unfinished games. I'd say that using the site has definitely helped me stop buying so many games actually, as I can actually see in terms of numbers how many games I have, instead of just having a stack of games on the shelf. I've taken a note of the games that I've finished and 100% completed in 2010, and I'm quite pleased actually. I've kept my amount of games unplayed in check and finished up many RPGs and other games that I'd been meaning to play for a while.

Finished (ie. finished the main story)

Final Fantasy VI Advance (GBA)
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Halo 2 (Xbox)
Final Fantasy IX (PS1)
Castlevania: Judgment (Wii)
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1)
Dragon Quest: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (DS)
Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (PS2)
Dragon Age: Origins (360)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)
Flower (PSN)
Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)
Blazblue: Calamity Trigger (360)
Mass Effect 2 (360)
Kingdom Hearts II (PS2)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (DS)
Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (PSP)
No More Heroes (Wii)
Suikoden Tierkreis (DS)
Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days (PSP)
Final Fantasy X (PS2)
Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (PS2)
Sakura Wars: So Long my Love (Wii)
Tales of Eternia (PSP)
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS)
Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS)
Demon's Souls (PS3)
Ys Seven (PSP)
Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (PSP)
Super Street Fighter IV (PS3)
Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero? (PSP)
Half Minute Hero (PSP)
Bayonetta (PS3)
Blazblue: Continuum Shift (PS3)

100% completed

Flower (PSN)
Golden Sun (GBA)

Master runs/challenges

Pokemon SoulSilver (DS)

-----------------------------------

I'm still taking part in RPGamer606's RPG marathon, even though my progress has slowed due to university starting up. I'm aiming to finish up Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Dragon Warrior Monsters next, and then go onto Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.

The year has actually gone really quickly...being at college or uni really takes a lot of time. Still, I've enjoyed the year for the most part. Some gaming highlights for me have been the talk of the 3DS, Demon's Souls release in PAL regions(its one of my favourite games this generation) and experiencing some rather awesome RPGs I missed out on at release-FFIX for one.

I've got a few ideas for a some features coming soon, some Game of the Year lists, and some retrospective playthroughs of old series. I will see what I can do. Currently it feels like I am cursed with technology: things seem to break when I even go near them.

Computer problems...

2010-12-30T16:24:00.003Z

My laptop has been acting up, it refused to start for a few days, giving me a checksum error and not going past the first few scenes of the windows startup.

I was about to reinstall windows today, turned it on and it gave me a new scene, Windows recovery manager or something similar. I had tried System Restore before, but this time it appeared to work.

So I am back on my laptop now, but rather sceptical...this problem has been going on for a few months, at varying levels of regularity..It might need to go into the shop to see if anything is still wrong.

So if you see a lack of updates or my presence online, it will most likely be due to my laptop having exploded or something.

Now Playing - "Sticky White Stuff"

2010-12-26T22:29:00.002Z

Merry Christmas people! Hopefully you had a good time so far...the year can really fly past at times. We've had lots of snow the past few days...what did you think I meant by the title? ;D Actually, its also a rather ridiculously named item from Demon's Souls.

I played a little bit more of one of my less played characters on Demon's Souls actually, one I am aiming to turn into a medium-heavy armoured melee build if I put more time into it. Some things are a lot harder with a melee class, but I think I'll appreciate the tanking abilities compared to my rather fragile Mage that I beat the game with last time.

Golden Sun (GBA) - Monday: got to Imil, icy town up north next to the Mercury lighthouse~how relevant for this time of year, the whole place here is iced up =p. Tuesday: didn't get to do much cos we went out at night again, Wednesday: after playing some Blazblue, played a couple more hours, getting through Imil Mines and Peak, and on to the stupid ass desert (I hate deserts in games...omfg, check out the original Crystal Chronicles for a bastard of an example) So anyway, I've got past the desert and done a bit more in the past few days, this game has a pretty good pacing, even if it is a bit too easy, it moves really fast. I'm around 10 hrs in and probably a little over halfway through. Did someone turn on Easy modo?! Next few days after that I blazed through right to the end. So at the moment I'm at the point where I can either go to the final stage of the game or go to the optional dungeon Crossbone Isle to get some more levels, gear and the final Djinn that I need for 100% completion. I'm definitely going to do Crossbone Isle before I go onto the next game, I'm just not sure when I'm going to do it.

Blazblue: Continuum Shift (PS3) - I played a little bit here and there of Blazblue after it finally arrived, but I've been a little bit dissapointed on quite a few aspects of this game. Maybe it was just the whole mess with Royal Mail's delivery failing across the country due to the weather and me having to wait a lot longer than normal for it. It was nearly to the point where I was going to try and get compensation for it not arriving. Anyway, once it arrived I tried it out and was dissapointed that they had really nerfed Rachel, my favourite character. Her moves have been decreased in damage and given some extra cooldown time in places, as far as I can tell. So I've been through the arcade mode with Noel (I got right to the end boss with Rachel and could not beat it... T_T) and the first Story mode section with Ragna. And I've played some multiplayer stuff online and with my friends but the game hasn't quite hooked me as the first game did. Perhaps I just need to give it some more time...There are too many games piling up for me at the moment though...

I got an Ipod Touch for Christmas so I've been buying a whole bunch of apps, including Chaos Rings, Infinite Blade, Plants vs Zombies, Robot Unicorn Attack (and the Heavy Metal edition) and Altered Beast. There are a LOT of awesome games on the IOS. "RISE FROM YOUR GWAVE!!"

So this coming week I'm probably gonna be trying to finish off Golden Sun, start up Castlevania: LoS or some other stuff. I'll be buying a few more games probably tomorrow actually..I don't know why..I have some tokens to spend on the PSN and in some Game stores, so thats my excuse =p

Hopefully you people have been having a good Christmas and holiday period! =D

Guile's Theme...

2010-12-23T11:36:00.001Z

DQVI announcement!

2010-12-20T20:35:00.006Z

We finally have news about the next DS Dragon Quest game, which will be the last in the Zenithian trilogy-Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation. I slightly preferred Realms of Reverie, but oh well, I would give a limb for this game regardless of what they called it. It will be brought over to America in February. No word yet of a PAL release, but it will happen. =D

http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q4-2010/122010b.html

http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/XM1D8PkRypvs3R75WXj39OfbjMoMQEnD

Now Playing - "Whadya buyin stranger?"

2010-12-19T23:55:00.002Z

Woohooo! I've finished my exams for the semester, so I'm off uni until the 17th of January. Once I get my Christmas shopping done for all the presents I need (I've still not started), I'll be more or less free to do whatever I want for a while. Time to get in some decent gaming and relax! hehe...=p

Anyway, I've been playing little bits of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) but I think I've hit another wall so to speak. I'm more or less done for the village quests of 6 star level, but one of the required ones for the next urgent is rather hard. Specifically, its the quest in which you have to take out a Diablos and a Black Diablos. My friend who is playing through at the same time is actually stuck on the exact same quest.. I think 50 minutes is quite a tight time limit to have as these particular monsters spend a lot of it's time underground, where, unless you have Sonic Bombs, you can't do anything to them. Anyway, I put it down shortly after I realised how ridiculous this quest is. I'll go back to it in a few weeks or so...

Dragon Warrior Monsters (GB) I've been slowly getting through some more of this game, I now have a Metaly. I'd initially intended to at least breed this to a Metabble or higher, but I forgot just how slowly these metal slimes level up...it will take a long time to get it to learn the skills I need it to get first, so I might just leave it as it is. Its proving an absolute life saver, as it can usually outlast anything its come up against. So far it hasn't died once. So in stupid cases where I come up against Mimics or other insta-kill spell Defeat using monsters, the Metaly is immune (to more or less all magic as well), so it will survive. I've been able to get through multiple floors of dungeons just with it carrying me, until I get to a point where I can get healed or buy revival items for the rest of the team.

So I have at least one definitely strong monster which I will bring to the end game stages, the others ones, I'm not too sure what I want to do with them. I think I'm 3/4 or 4/5s through the game now, not too sure. I'll no doubt play some more of this game this week. Might try and blast through the rest of it.

Mostly Bayonetta (PS3) that I've been playing this week though. I finished it up today after doing the last few chapters. So my thoughts on a game that I had heard a massive amount of hype, then praise for? Well, it definitely does deserve a lot of the good criticism that it gets: its a very slick, stylish action game in the vein of Devil May Cry and other stuff I don't really play. Based on this experience, I am slightly interested in trying out some similar games. The gameplay really shines, it has a lot of variety in it, which definitely makes up for any repetitiveness that the reusing of enemies and attacks brings to the game. There are driving scenes, reaction commands, minigames and lots of other stuff which keeps the game interesting. Some of the action scenes and enemies in this game are downright amazing. Storyboarding and creating this game must have been a crazy experience-they definitely had some inspired people on the team.

So now that I've finished Bayonetta, I'll either pick up a ps2 game, or Oblivion or Disgaea 3 next. Hopefully Blazblue arrives some time soon, as I have no way to prove it if its actually been lost in the post. Amazon's super saver delivery has no way to track it as far as I can tell.

Rehaul of the blog

2010-12-13T23:15:00.002Z

Blog redesigned-changed it to a lighter theme and a template behind it. Looks slightly cleaner and more professional. Only thing is, things seem more crunched together into the centre.

Let me know what you think on here, or wherever you see me.

Now Playing - "And now this cat is going to barf on me."

2010-12-12T23:55:00.002Z

In my quest to find something actually fun to play, I've gone into a bit of an RPG-ADD phase this week, playing way too many different games in little bursts.

I tried to progress in the postgame stuff in Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS) and did some more grottoes to get more maps, but it really feels like I'm not making a dent. Although fun, I think it will take a lot more time to make any sort of progress into the postgame quests and grottoes. I did realise that you get a map every time you clear one, even if you've already done it. Why did no-one tell me this? To be honest, the multiplayer and postgame stuff is quite poorly understood to many. They might play DQIX and finish the story, and might not necessarily enjoy it that much, but if you put a fair bit of time into unlocking quests, jobs and getting items, it really starts to feel like more of an interesting game, at least to me. The multiplayer game is a lot of fun as well, but sadly a lot of people won't experience it. Online multiplayer would have been so good in this game. Hopefully they will work it into one of their future games somehow...but then again we all know about Nintendo and their ~~submarine launch codes~~ Friend codes and love of all things internet...

I played a bit more of Golden Sun (GBA), not much, but got a few dungeons in, to the first place with major puzzles, Kojima forest. I remember the layout of this bit of the story annoying me. You don't have a town nearby where you can buy healing items or rest because everyone is turned to goddamn trees. So when one of my dudes fell in battle halfway through the tree, I remembered being annoyed at the same bit. Plus I really hate some of the damn puzzles in this game...Anyway, I've got like 4 or so of the Djinn, and I'm liking playing through again, even though its not quite got the same magic for me as it originally did. If I can play through this one without my data deleting itself again (-_-) and play through the 2nd game, I'll pick up Dark Dawn...I've been looking forward to it for ages.

Bayonetta (PS3) Man, this game is awesome, I've got a bit further now-up to chapter 9 I think. Some battles are giving me some problems, like those 3 bayonetta clone-esque things which can somehow resurrect each other. I finally got past that though, enjoying most of what I've been seeing. Its hilarious at times this game, but in places frustrating. Like the obligatory platforming sections...I hate platforming. Anyway, progressing through nicely.

I heard good things about Costume quest, which came out around Halloween I think, so I tried the Costume Quest [demo] on PS3. I had even heard it described as a turn based RPG, and was slightly confused. It hadn't looked anything like that in screens and other stuff I had seen on the game. I guess you could describe it that way, but it is quite a strange, unusual game, with a quirky style to it. I can't really say too much about it, but if you like things told from a childish point of view, you might like this game. Its not really for me, but it is cheap to pick up on the XBLA and PSN if you are.

Hah, I also got back into Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP), so you guys aren't off the hook yet, I'll be talking about this game for another couple hundred hours hehe....so I beat the Tigrex urgent quest to unlock 5 star quests after a while of trying. It seems it wasn't as hard as I first thought once I knew the attacks it would through at me. Some of them are very easy to avoid, like in most cases, the charge attack. Keeping your health high and weapons sharp is really important, and not attacking more than is sensible in each window of opportunity. Traps are another way that are quite a few people online do things against Tigrex, especially if you are going for fast kills. My stingy nature though meant I didn't want to waste too many materials to make the traps, so I just took along a few barrel traps for some extra damage. It is quite hard to hit it with them though, as it moves around quite a lot, plus the boulder toss attack can destroy the barrels if at the right range.

So anyway, I'm now up to a lv10 Blango set of armour, and I have my Rathian as an alternative. Its upgraded to lv6. I've also been making some progress on weapons, with some Rarity 5's made now-I've got Flame Syphos and Kirin Bolt Indora sword and shields, and enough money and components to make the Tigrex SnS, the Rex Talon. I'm not entirely sure if I will bother with it though, it has less attack than some of my others, also it doesn't have an Element, which could be a good thing or a bad thing. I managed to blaze through the 5 star quests in a day or two, quickly unlocking the next urgent quest, Rathian and Rathalos at the same time. Instead of trying to press on though, I've been working on clearing up the rest of the 5 star quests. I've just got one left to do, the Lunastra. I've not tried it yet, so I'm not sure what it will be like. I'll either keep trying to do it, or try and beat the next Urgent and progress onwards.

Saturday and Sunday, its been mostly Dragon Warrior Monsters (GB) that I've been playing, and I've actually made some progress! I was stuck on the Skydragon boss in the Wisdom world for ages now, in fact that is what made me put the game down. I just couldn't survive for very long against it-the damage per turn was too high. So I bred some stronger monsters, working on getting my Healslime the Healus ability, and a strong dragon type or two to resist its fire attacks. So when I tried it again today, I pwned it good. Increase a couple times to buff the team's defense, Healus roughly each turn to keep HP at max, Sicklick to make it's defense drop and shiver for a turn, all the while, Twinhits buffing atk and Yellhelp for ridiculous damage on his surprised ass.

So it looks like I'm making progress now and starting to enjoy this game more. I really like the 2nd game and I'm hoping I can get into this one as much as I did for the sequel.

Goddamn, its freezing...

2010-12-11T23:45:00.003Z

The other day, our Combi boiler broke down, which means we have no central heating or hot water from the taps. So its pretty damn cold here, seriously, the other day I had about 3 or 4 layers of clothes on, 2 scarves and a pair of gloves and my feet were still numb.

Anyway, the repairmen came up and fixed it, so we had heating for a night and a bit..but the same problem came up again now, so it is back to the cold until at least Monday, when someone will be able to come out and fix it again. Something seems crappy about this company, the boiler, or maybe the repair people's job...

At least the weather is getting a bit more mild, and the snow is melting away...somehow its still very cold inside though.

To be honest, I don't wanna sound moany-I prefer being too cold rather than too hot, but its no fun having numb hands, makes killing monsters in MHFU harder =p

Now Playing - "Shine Get!"

2010-12-05T23:00:00.000Z

Man, I really need to put more effort into posting more regularly on here, its really started drying up. I've tried to not let it go completely to shit, but uni work has really been taking the majority of my time, so I don't have much time to play games, and as a result, not much to talk about on here, especially in my Now Playing posts I do every week. Anyway, I'll try and work on that and put in some time when I can. This week on Sunday (when I normally try to post these), I played a few other games for limited time each, for a few reasons: to see what I might play next, for something other than MHFU to talk about here, but mostly just for fun and a break. When gaming starts to grow old, or anything resembling a chore, its time for something to change in my opinion.

Bayonetta (PS3) This game is FUN! It can also be pretty tough, some of the bosses. I was stuck on the one at the end of Chapter 2 for a while mainly because of the camera angle being so close to the action, so it really doesn't give you a lot of time to react. So to beat it, you really need to pay attention to what the boss is doing. The only bad thing is that the camera shakes around a lot, and the boss moves all over the place, so sometimes I had no idea where I was and if I was safe or not. Anyway, I'm really liking the game so far, its so quirky and stylish. For me, not much of an action game fan, I'm quite intrigued by this game, and if I manage to finish it and enjoy it, I'll probably track down some of the Devil May Cry games. Plus I just remembered I need to pick up the God of War collection for the PS3. Thats why I traded in God of War I on the PS2 at least..

Anyway, I'm looking forward to playing more of Bayonetta in the next few weeks, if I can find some time in between revision for my final exams this semester.

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) Again, what I've been playing most of the week. I don't think I've made much progress since last week, but I'm not sure. I now have a few more sets of armour, the full Rathian and Ceanataur, which along with my Basarios, don't think I will use much. Maybe the Rathian if I upgrade it, as I like the Health+30 ability. But what I've been concentrating on is my Blango mail set. It is up to lv10 now, and I got 5 Warmbreeze jewels to add an extra ability, Cold Resistance [Hi] so it means I am immune to all cold environments, rather cool, and I hope it will help me against the Tigrex, which is the boss I am stuck on. If I beat it, I will have done all the quests from 1 star to 4 star, and unlock the next level of Elder's quests, 5*.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS) I don't think I'm ever going to finish this or MHFU if I don't concentrate on one or the other for a while, they are just such deep games...they really require a lot of time (something which I don't have a lot of right now) to get through. Anyway, I put a bit more time into exploring the 4th sector, Delphinus, trying to get new demons recruited, as I slightly screwed up my team. I was really keen on getting some demons that knew stat boost spells, so I ended up with like 3 or so of them which are only really good at stat boosting. So I need some that I can use to kill enemies efficiently, with skills like Maragi, Mazio, and the other elemental spells that are really useful in these games. Right now, I have some holes in my team, so I'm working on that and the early stages of Delphinus.

Dragon Warrior Monsters (GBC) I tried a bit more of this today and man, the difficulty really spikes on some of the bosses. I'm probably going to need to breed another team for this one I'm on currently. Either that or grind massively...each turn the Skydragon boss in the Wisdom world pwns with Fire damage across the team every turn, so I'm likely going to need monsters resistant to fire to even stand a chance. Don't think I'll play much more of this any time soon. Even though I find it fun for the most part, the bosses really annoy the hell out of me, and I don't really like the way the worlds are done, they really improved things in the 2nd game.

OMG..the snow is causing all kinds of trouble here. I was stuck on the train for half hour this evening after my geometrical optics revision lecture (which went on from 2-after 7:30, I left early). But to be honest, I got off lightly, there are 5 hour delays on the M8, no buses running in Edinburgh, few taxis, and reduced buses in Glasgow...

I have 3 exams remaining and I seriously hope I can get in on time...I've got a few backup plans ready though.

POKAYMON!

2010-12-05T04:11:00.001Z

Man this is full of awesomeness, me and some others at uni were talking about Pokemon the other day and looked this up and started singing along in the library.

Brings back memories, for sure! XD

Gorubi, Gorubi!

2010-12-05T04:08:00.001Z

4chan spawns a new meme babby

2010-12-04T20:07:00.002Z

wtf...what is this? XD

Now Playing - “It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.”

2010-11-28T15:43:00.003Z

Wow, its starting to feel like Christmas almost!(?) I'm one of the least Christmassy people you could ever meet, as I usually focus on whatever coursework I can until my exams before Christmas are done, and then leave around a week or so to try and get my Christmas shopping in and relax. Man, I'm looking forward to a holiday. We even have some deep snow over most of Scotland and the UK from what I've heard. It helps to make it feel more like Christmas...but I just hope it doesn't cause too many problems for transport and stuff. I have some exams before Christmas, one this week in fact, and I want to be able to make it on time on the train.

Mostly Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) I've been playing this week..still addicted to it! I'm not really sure how (if at all) I've been progressing-I've just been working on armour sets and improving my weapons and armour until I can get through the quests I haven't done. I'm currently on the 4 star quests, with 2 more to do I think. I've unlocked the Urgent required to go to 5 star, but its the Tigrex and from what my friend said, that thing sounds hard. So I'm just more or less grinding up some decent gear before I even attempt it.

I've currently got a full set of Blango mail, upgraded to *checks*... lv7. (Wow, I forgot I had upgraded it so far =D) and a variety of Sword and Shield weapons, a few of which are green rarity. Upper Battleaxe and Deadly poison are probably the most powerful ones I have, but I am wanting to improve my Frost Edge+ and some of the others.

I've also been working on some other sets of armour, like the Kut-Ku (I need 1 more Ear), Basarios and Plesioth. This game just drains my time..seriously, it can easily distract me for entire days at a time.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS) I finally made a bit more progress in this game this week. I got past the final bit of the 3rd sector, Carina. And now OMG at the story! It's remaining interesting..I just wish the game as a whole could keep me as hooked as the story does.

So if I'm going to be playing much more games this week, it will likely be more Monster Hunter...boring, I know (at least, it will be for some of you.) But I have to say, if you haven't tried the games, at least give Freedom Unite a shot. You can get it for dirt cheap now, and it can keep you occupied for anywhere up to 1000 hrs depending on how much you do.

To make up for my lack of decent Now Playing posts (and in fact, any other content), enjoy this song - one of my favourite tracks off the Freedom Unite OST

Now Playing - “Attack its weak point for massive damage”

2010-11-21T22:21:00.004Z

Depressing to think that my final exams for the semester are fast approaching. I still found some time to play games, of course! ;D

For a large chunk of the week and weekend I've been absolutely obsessed with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) Either redoing quests I've done to try and get materials for new armour, or working on the 4 star village quests, I've been playing this game a lot. I'm starting to see that it is getting quite hard in places actually...some of the 4* quests are rather nasty. Kushala Daora (in the picture) hits hard, but I think I have all the gear I need to beat it. I just need a degree of luck...I have a Poison Battleaxe and Blango Gear to cut out the cold status, get some Quake resistance, and hopefully poison it somehow or other to reduce it's wind aura...that thing is annoying when it hits the right angle. What it'll do will be to turn to face me as I attack it, then the wind aura will knock me straight back. If it is quick enough, it will start up an attack which can hit while I am still knocked down from the aura. Such broken mechanics at times in this game....I really need to play a game that is more simple for times of frustration. I am very tempted to pick up Cladun, but then again, I have a couple games that I haven't even put time into, that I got really recently (Bayonetta, Oblivion goty, 4 Warriors of Light.)

Anyway, when Monster Hunter isn't making me shout profanities, it is somehow really addictive...I still can't really pinpoint what it is that makes it so appealing. I mean, it is surprisingly deep for such a simple game on the surface. I've already sunk a huge amount of hours into it and I still don't understand a lot of the gameplay concepts and mechanics in it. Skill Trees for one thing, I'll have to ask my (MH fan) friend at uni about it and some of the other stuff.

I made an account at the Gamerbase in the local HMV near my uni. Basically its got a load of consoles, PCs, tvs etc and a good selection of games to try out. You just need to pay £3/hour, or a bit cheaper during mornings and evenings, and you can try out any of the games they have. A good thing to occupy the odd free period at uni. So me and a few of my friends played some multiplayer stuff for a bit. We played some Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty (PC), Left 4 Dead 2 (PC), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PC), Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock (360) and one of the Total War games, I forget which one. I was probably most interested in Starcraft 2, as I loved the original game back when I was in school. So it was good to try this game finally. My computer wouldn't be able to run it unfortunately. I built up a fairly good Zerg army, but I didn't actually get round to fighting any of the enemies... =p

They didn't have Black Ops downloaded yet, so we tried some multiplayer games on MW2, and it was the first time I'd played this as well. (Yeah, I'm not much of a CoD fan) I was quite impressed with the responsiveness and sharpness to the graphics running on the PC. If I had the choice, I'd obviously get it for PC. But right now, the only way I could run it would be on PS3 or 360.

What games to buy next?

2010-11-18T23:27:00.010Z

I'm not finding much time to actually play games at the moment, but that doesn't stop me wanting to buy new games. European gamers are getting some good releases coming out over here, in my eyes at least. There isn't a big difference between the US release and our one over here, in quite a few titles.

I've now got a few titles on my radar, so to speak... Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman, Disgaea Infinite, Cladun: This is an RPG, Call of Duty: Black Ops (but I think I'll pass on this) and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. On this last one, I'm intrigued by the multiplayer, but I really think I should play the 2nd game before I try it.

Disgaea Infinite is a visual novel, and apparantely pretty short, but I will pick it up at some point when it is cheap.

We've got a few on the way as well; Hyperdimension Neptunia, and Blazblue: Continuum Shift (they have an annoying habit of pushing it back many times). I'm also thinking about Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, if I manage to finish the quests in the Freedom Unite before the release some time next year. The trailers look rather awesome. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is pretty much a must buy for me as well, although I might have to play through the 2nd game at least again before I play the new one. So, some good titles on my radar, might get some for Christmas hopefully =3 Way off in the distance most likely is Disgaea 4. I'm a big fan of the first 2 Disgaea games, and still haven't round to the 3rd, but I will.

I already preordered Hyperdimension Neptunia on a whim. I hope I don't regret it...Other than that, I'm really considering Cladun, even though I've heard mixed things.

Now Playing - "Use the boost to get through!"

2010-11-14T14:50:00.010Z

So when I've had a chance to play games this week it has either been stuff on the PSP or the laptop. Only for a few hours at a time really, I was trying to study for my Pharmacology test which we had on Friday. Anyway, Diablo II (PC) has been entertaining me so far. I never really used the ability "x% better chance to find Magic Items" much, but after getting told about its potential from a friend, I decided to try and abuse it as much as possible this time round. So any time I see items with that ability that are remotely decent, I'll equip them and try and kill as many enemies and open as many containers as possible. The results so far have been really good. Much better than I had expected. Normally, in my other playthroughs, I'd only have 2 or 3 set items at most by the time I got roughly half way/3 quarters through Act III. But on my Druid at the moment, I have around 9 or so set items, as well as 2 Unique items (although, annoyingly, I got 2 of the same one...) Add to that a whole bunch of Rare items, gems, and a lot of runes that I only seem to see later on in the game, and I have to say, I'm amazed at the results. I'm considering that it could be down to the latest patch, which I never had before. Perhaps they retweaked some percentage stuff somewhere. Anyway, its a lot of fun, this character. The only thing I am worried about is when I get to the higher difficulties and enemies are immune to elements, for example. I've already had 2 Fire Immune special characters...my Fire Elemental druid doesn't like them..

Neverwinter Nights (PC) Making some very slow progress. I'm still on the first quest you have to do, making my way through hordes of enemies in the Prison district. I really should try and save some money so I can hire another party member, as I'm dying a lot. I'm still not quite drawn into the game, the world or my character as of yet. Hopefully that'll change, as I don't want to have this as one of those games I'll never finish.

I played some more of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) during the week, finally getting past one of the bosses that had me stuck (the damn Khezu.) I think there is something about quite fast paced games that gives me trouble at times. I don't play enough of them and its probably down to my reaction speed or something. Anyway, I'm still liking this game, but not as much as the initial time where I got completely addicted to it. It seems like it could get quite repetitive-they do a lot of reusing maps, pallete swapping, and there are some rather formulaic quest types. Still, its some simple, but rewarding stuff. I love seeing my character progress towards the next armour set or weapon upgrade =D

Bayonetta (PS3) I traded in a few old games I wasn't going to play or finish any time soon to get Bayonetta and Oblivion Game of the Year Edition. I completely forgot about the criticism around this version of the game. I've installed the game and the loading times still seem really long..I don't know if thats something present on both versions but oh well. It looks good enough with the HDMI cable I've got plugged in to my PS3. The action is really good in this game so far, but I think I really suck at it. I kept losing at like the first battle where you have to get 3 Torture attacks in 5 minutes. So I turned it to Easy mode...don't laugh lol.. Anyway, I like what I see of this game from the first half hour or so. I've put it on hold for a while. I don't want to get too far and not have a chance to play it during the week. Might leave it till I have some more free time.

Now Playing - "I will show them the true power of a pervert!"

2010-11-07T21:55:00.013Z

Sunday again...this semester at uni is starting to pick up pace fast. For the past 4 weeks, we've had 1 class test a week, we've got one this week as well. Then an IT test next monday as well. Its just one of those formality things you need to go through to graduate. Many unis have similar things here I think. Anyway, only a few weeks more till we take a break for Christmas now(after 2 or 3 exams though T_T) Even so, it somehow seems like it was a while since I last posted on here. So here's a little on what I've been playing a few games this week, in varying amounts.

I finished up Half Minute Hero (PSP) earlier in the week. Its a fairly short and sweet game, but some of the modes do drag on a bit. Not necessarily in length, but they just feel a bit simple and bland compared to the Hero mode and Evil Lord mode which had some really quirky dialogue as well as pretty fun gameplay. The first mode, the Hero mode which is based on the RPG genre is probably the most fun and intense, it goes downhill slightly after that, but I still had a lot of fun with the game, especially considering the price I got it at.

I eventually got convinced by a friend to pick up Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) and I've got really addicted to this game. It is really simple but fun and rewarding stuff. Its definitely not for everyone though...its very grindy and perhaps repetitive, depending on how you do things. It also has a really high learning curve, which puts a lot of people off initially. But once I gave it a chance, I'm really enjoying playing it. Its quite cool on co-op as well, it really adds to the fun. I really like just going out and getting the items needed for a new set of armour or weapon. There is something really rewarding about getting there in the end. I still can't find my damn Velocidrome Head for a weapon upgrade. Its a 2% chance at low ranks....Still, its quite fun stuff.

So far I've done the 1 star quests and have a few more of the 2 star ones to get through. I can see myself putting a lot of time into this. Why can't more games be this addictive? I'm actually stuck now, damn Khezu...I beat it fine when I was co-opping with my friend at uni..but doing it on my own is much harder... -_-

Didn't touch much more of Diablo II (PC), apart from I raced through the end of Act II with my Elemental Druid. I do a lot of damage, so I kill the enemies easily, but I found surviving for long quite hard. Especially against the Act II boss Duriel, who could trap me with his cold element slowdown and wipe me out in a few hits...I should really buff up my Dex and Vit stats instead of concentrating so much on Magic (I already have around 70 magic at lv23 or so if I remember rightly..)

Haven't had much of a chance to play Neverwinter Nights (PC) yet though, I want to put some more time into it when I get some time. Maybe next week cos I won't have a test late on in the week...I really need to get back into Strange Journey as well though...I don't wanna put my save game aside for too long, like I did with Digital Devil Saga.

Other than that, I played little bits here and there of Super Street Fighter IV (360) and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (PSP) Only really did multiplayer stuff with my friends at the weekend. Finally got to try out the Arena mode in Birth By Sleep. The racing game is as unimpressive as in the game. Seriously, why no power ups? The battle stuff though is a bit more fun, either co-op or against a friend, you fight each other with a time limit I think (I skipped all the tutorial stuff).

Now Playing - "Pum, Pum, Pumpkin - Halloween Cannon!"

2010-10-31T23:00:00.001Z

Happy Halloween! Hope you have all been having fun. What did I dress up as? Wat? I've just been playing games for a couple hours...thats more fun! I've been playing some old school RPGs =D *geek*

Half Minute Hero (PSP) - Gotta love>

So I've done the Hero mode now, it took me up to 60%, which I don't really get. Maybe I missed stuff. Anyway, next up-the faaabulous Evil Lord mode. (He just reminds me of the rather fruity Emperor and Kuja from the FF games)

There was also a Turtle sage...where have I seen that before? XD

I'm getting a bit of a craving for some old retro style games. Considering 3D Dot Game Heroes, but I suck at Zelda gaems... :3 What else, maybe Scott Pilgrim game, I tried some of the co-op and it was fun stuff. Will definitely get Cladun when it comes out.

I was like OMG! Neverwinter Nights on GOG.com the other day, although I wasn't sure if my laptop would run it. My laptop is a fairly new, so I was fairly confident, just I wasnt sure if my built in graphics card would be up to the task. But anyway, I bit the bullet and bought Neverwinter Nights: Diamond Edition (PC) It runs it alright, just with one flaw I've found. If I change the character's skin colour or hair colour at character creation they turn all metallicy, like liquid metal =O So, aside from this texture issue, it runs fine. I've put some time into it and I'm getting used to the game. I started up a Mage at first, realised she looked like some kind of Terminator 2000 thing, so made a new character, a Fighter and didn't bother changing the skins. I'm seeing a very strong BGII/Kotor vibe with this, as well as seeing how Biowares games have evolved and influenced even stuff like WoW with this one. Anyway, that aside, its good to be playing some games which go back to my roots. I started out playing RPGs on the PC, with Diablo, Baldur's Gate and loads of other good stuff, and I'm enjoying what I've played so far. I still prefer the rich, detailed backgrounds and environments from BGII to the at times rather bland 3D environments of this. I won't criticise it too much, as it did come out many years ago and it was their first foray into a 3D RPG (correct me if I'm wrong), plus its early days so far. All I've seen is the starting area and some of the Peninsula district of Neverwinter.

I tried a bit more of Monster Hunter Freedom 2 (PSP) ...still not quite into it yet. I did one more mission in the Training academy where I had to find Honey from item spots...but I don't understand where to get it or how. I mean...I got given a Bug Net and a Pickaxe..how do I get Honey with either of those? =/ They are all like "lol good luck, go find it!"

Other than that, I played a bit more of my rockin Elemental Druid on Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (PC), although I'm technically still on the main game content, in Act II where I left off last time. This game never gets old, seriously. I'm kind of tempted to take a character all the way through Normal difficulty, Nightmare and Hell modes as well. I've never done that. I know the game well enough to succeed I think. Plus its about the only way you could possibly call Diablo II 100% done. There are like endless items so thats not on the cards.

Red Wii...

2010-10-30T20:22:00.004+01:00

This looks rather awesome. If it is shiny though, a Matt finish would look slightly less good somehow. Its still not quite up to the level of appeal of the Black one though.

Its good Nintendo is bringing so many colours to the DS and Wii range now, but...why did they not include Motion Plus in the Wii controllers from the start? -_-

I've not played my Wii in a while and I don't really want to have to buy 300 peripherals for it if I want to play new games, but its turning into that slowly, I now need to get a Classic controller and a Motion Plus at some point. They have lots of cool games on the Wii store or whatever its called. So many people don't even use it, and its a shame.

I kind of want to get the Black classic pad that comes with Monster Hunter Tri..I really should have bought that at launch as its now fairly expensive. But I was still majorly on the fence about Monster Hunter. (I still am, but not so much)

Thats it for now, a mild, quarter strength rant or maybe its just a talk about the Wii.

Some awesome news.

2010-10-30T00:18:00.006+01:00

NIS America has announced they will be bringing some rather awesome looking games over to Europe. I was quietly hoping that they would bring us at least one of either Cladun or ZHP, and it looks like they will be bringing both over to the PSN. I've noticed a lot of RPGs heading straight for the PSN here, probably to keep costs associated with localising for Europe to a minimum. Not only that, we will be getting more Disgaea love. Disgaea Infinite and Prinny 2 will be coming over to the PSN as well! Good thing I never imported Infinite. Although...I can see my memory stick running out in the near future. Maybe I won't get all of these ones..

http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q4-2010/102910e.html

GOG.com (Good Old Games) has put Neverwinter Nights Diamond edition up for sale for the low price of $9.99. This is brilliant news as I was actually considering getting NWN soon. And the versions are all very cheap apart from this Diamond edition which has all of the add-on stuff included.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/neverwinter_nights_diamond_edition

Then there is what was called Super Dimensional Game Neptune in Japan. I remember reading about this on RPGamer a while back and never expected it to come out over here. It is now! It will be coming out in North America and Europe some time in 2011 under the name Hyperdimension Neptunia.

http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q4-2010/102910d.html

It seems to be a really quirky, light hearted RPG which parodies and pokes fun at a lot of things gaming. I'll be looking forward to seeing what kind of reviews this one gets. NIS sure has a lot of games on the go at the moment, and I hope they live up to the level of quality they were claiming they would get them to a while back.

Stupid temperature...

2010-10-26T19:52:00.004+01:00

There have been some really cold days this week and last week, giving me a kind of on/off cold and sore throat which I can't seem to get rid of completely.

But today it was fairly mild, just ridiculously wet for the most of the day. So I can understand that they would have the heating on in the uni buildings, but man...they kinda overdid it. It was roasting pretty much everywhere I went. I was actually sweating at times... ;_; I even felt like I was gonna pass out and fall asleep later on in the library. I had to go upstairs to find a cooler floor of the library to work in.

Now, I'm not exactly saying that they should leave the heating off or pump cool air through the air conditioning, but I hate it when its like this..it makes it so hard to keep alert...a few other people I was talking to said they were falling asleep too.

I don't even know why I'm posting this here..maybe just venting some steam or something. I like having a blog for this kind of outpouring of my mind.

What it looked like in my uni lecture theatres:

Perhaps minus the sun...

Now Playing - "Might as well piss on a frog"

2010-10-24T22:00:00.002+01:00

I'm in the middle of quite an intensive bit of the uni's trimester at the moment. We've got Class tests coming thick and fast; one each week for each of the 4 modules. I've done 2 of them so far-Fundamentals of Pharmacology and Pathology and Geometrical Optics, the latter of which I find rather hard at times. (Largely due to the lecturer's way of doing things (craply)) Anyway, this is about the games I got a chance to play this week, not uni stuff. I played a little bit of Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS) over the first few days of the week, but its not a game I can ever seem to get much time put into. Once I finish up the other game I've been playing, I'll try and concentrate on this one for a bit. I am liking the way things are going, and I reckon I have some strong demons on my side. I'm just under 24 hours into the game, and I'm a few quests into the Carina sector. (That might've been where I was last week...I really don't think I've made much progress)

I'll try and get past this boss later tonight perhaps, if I get some time. I've got a few TV shows to catch up on.

Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero? (PSP) I picked this one up on Thursday, started it up and got absolutely addicted to it. Its some kind of wierd combination of my suckiness at these games and my obsessiveness coming together which means I keep playing until I succeed, even if that many poor Prinnies die. Platformers do seem to make me rage though, A LOT. I'm about 9 and a half hours through this game and on the final stage now. Its quite hard at times, but its really quirky and fun, it has a lot of really awesome geeky references, anything from Star Wars to Dragonball Z. If you like the Disgaea games or if you are just a fan of platformer type games, check this one out. Its been worth the £8 I payed for it by a mile.

Some of the gameplay could have been tweaked here and there though. I've had a few cheap deaths that were unavoidable surely. I'll get knocked by an enemy and sent flying into other enemies or off cliffs. Maybe they left that in intentionally though.

Monster Hunter Freedom 2 (PSP) I borrowed this off a friend in my class at uni as he's a big fan of the series and I said I was interested in trying some of the games out. I've only put about an hour or two into it so far, just to see what it was like. It plays very much like the demo of Freedom Unite I played, apparantely the games on the PSP are all incredibly similar, just with more or less content really. The stories are pretty much non existant, but what you really play these games for is the amount of quests, items etc there is to get through. The controls though, really need improved for me. I don't see why they cant map the rotate camera to the shoulder buttons. That would be much more intuitive for me. I had some fun with the mindless slashing of dinos. I think I put it down in a bit of a rage though when I couldn't time the cooking well enough to get a Well-Done Steak. I'm really crappy at timing related stuff like that, and for such an early quest, this seemed to have a RIDICULUOUSLY small window of opportunity to cook the item needed for a quest. Take the steak off too soon, you get a Rare Steak, too late and you get a Burnt Steak. Maybe I was just doing it wrong or something...but it seemed bizarrely hard.

I might pick it back up at some point, to try and see some more of the quests, I've barely made a dent in the training quests.

So other than Prinny, I didn't put much time into games this week. A combo of studying for exams and football during the evenings. I'm nearly done with Prinny though! =D

Now Playing - "driving through the business district in a tank!"

2010-10-18T16:30:00.007+01:00

It was my birthday on Sunday and I haven't played that much of any games really, but played some on Saturday and Sunday. Had some friends over on Sunday to Monday so didn't have a chance to write this post...or sleep much either to be honest XD Damn them...it was a good laugh though.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS) I've put in a few more hours to this and now I'm into the 3rd sector, Carina. At times it really frustrates me. I'll make lots of progress only for something stupidly cheap to happen and make me lose a chunk of progress. But when I do get places in the game, I really enjoy the story and battles. Probably the thing I enjoy most about the gameplay side of things is just fusing demons and recruiting new ones. The SMT games always have a lot of depth to the demon side of things. In fact, I'm looking forward to trying out Lucifer's Call...but I am apprehensive about it. If I struggle with DDS, DS and SJ at times, I've heard Nocturne/Lucifer's Call is much harder..so I might find it hard. I just hope I have the patience and time for it.

I got a couple games for my birthday but didn't want too many as I've got a few I want to play and haven't even touched yet. One of the ones I got was Super Street Fighter IV (PS3) My brother got me this one and I'd already played a lot of multiplayer when with my friends (they are insanely good at SF games) but never really played many of the trials or Arcade mode stories. So I was glad to get the chance to try out the Arcade mode and other stuff. I love fighting games with lots of stuff to do, and this one has a whole load of characters and challenging things to do and unlock. I didn't play much of it so far, just some on Sunday before some friends came over. I managed to finish the Arcade mode with Akuma in the end. (Seth was damn hard, even on easy mode T_T) I also started learning Guile so I could get the hang of charge characters. I'm pretty good at the timing, but still getting used to the buttons and how to follow up with other moves. I'm fairly pleased with how well I know the game even though I've barely played it, just because I played so much multiplayer over at my friend's place.

Final Fantasy: The 4 Warriors of Light (DS) I just started this one up to see what the opening was like and I really like the graphical style. I can see why some people won't like it. It could be lumped into that ugly 3D DS game group. I think it really adds to the charm of the game. Its got a kind of Animal Crossing/Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles feel to it. I've literally only played up to the first save point, so I will save my comments for when I've played more of it. Plus I think I could potentially put a lot of time into it. Things with job systems and lots to grind and master are quite often my cup of tea.

Some new trailers

2010-10-13T23:54:00.000+01:00

Some of Square Enix's upcoming games have had me interested for a while now, and I just saw these videos on youtube today. Enjoy ;D

This never fails to make me laugh

2010-10-13T00:02:00.001+01:00

http://www.ihasabucket.com/

Sunflower Seeds - Tate Modern - 12 October 2010 to 2 May 2011

2010-10-11T22:21:00.003+01:00

I saw this story on the news today and it really blew me away. The attention to detail that has gone into this is amazing. Check it out, or go along and see the exhibition if you are able.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11515658

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/298812

Now Playing - "All worlds begin in darkness, and all so end"

2010-10-10T23:30:00.003+01:00

Played some bits and bobs of some games this week. Didn't make much progress apart from in Kingdom Hearts, and some Strange Journey. I'm considering starting up another game of Final Fantasy Tactics: WotL or at least continuing with my save. They've got a playthough of the game going on at one of the sites I go to, and I said I'd take part. But FFT is such a time-intensive game. I need to get some more non-rpgs hehe...

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (PS3) [demo] - yeah, I played this! But only the demo... =( I really wanna pick the game up some time soon but I don't know when I'm going to have time to play it any time soon. So my thoughts on it (at least on what I played)? It feels like a God of War type action game, but with a definite Castlevania feel. It has the sub weapons system, so you can pick up Throwing Knives and whatnot. The lock on is automatic so when I threw Throwing Knives they automatically went towards the nearest enemy I believe. It might cause some problems if you don't attack the one you want I guess, but it might work out well. Its hard to tell from the demo.

The graphics, audio and presentation are top-notch for sure. The mini-cutscenes which showed some werewolve type enemies in the rain were amazing. The reflections and lighting for the water were very well done and I'm really looking forward to seeing more of the game. The voice acting is of high quality as well. I heard some of Patrick Stewart's and Ewan McGregor's lines and was impressed with the stuff in the demo.

I'm really interested to see if the story will deviate much from the rather simplistic Castlevania template. Kojima is someone that has become quite divisive for his storytelling. Myself, I'm really intrigued to see what his cinematic approach will bring to this series (which is one of my favourites.)

As far as I'm concerned, it looks a pretty cool game so far. Now I need to get the full game (and find some time to play it...)

I finished off Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (PSP) this week. I thought there would be a bit more story after I finished the 3 character's stories but apparantely there isn't. The story seemed to be a bit unfinished, and on a rather bittersweet note. I won't give away anything, but I guess it does have quite a good story. It just ends on a positive, upbeat but slightly sad note.

Compared to the other games, it doesn't feel as strong in terms of charm and atmosphere. It suffers from being on the psp slightly in that it can't do as much as say a PS2 or PS3 game could do. I really liked in KH and KHII that you got Disney characters joining your party temporarily, as well as having Donald and Goofy available. That added dialogue, and lead to a more diverse, interesting game. I touched on this before, and same with the enemies in this game. They don't feel quite as imaginitive or unique as the other games, and some feel a bit too recycled.

Still, I had a lot of fun with Terra's and Aqua's story. Aqua was definitely my favourite as I prefer playing as Mages. I did a lot of grinding with her and found it was more interesting-I got bored less when I was using spells to nuke enemies that took much longer to kill with the Melee characters. (Especially Ventus-he has fast, weak attacks and I really didn't enjoy playing through with him.)

What happened to the original trio you may ask? Well, some of the characters from the original games make an appearance or two in Birth by Sleep, which seems to be a prequel by about 5 or 10 years.

I made a little bit of progress in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS)-I got past some stupid bit that had me stuck for a while. So I'm still slowly getting through the Bootes sector. I'm on the last mission of it now (actually I think I was at this bit this time last week) and I'm going to play some more.

I might start up another game to go along with SMT, but if I do that, I'll not make much or any progress in Strange Journey. Its apparantely quite a long, deep game. Oh, I picked up Lucifer's Call on Amazon the other day. Not sure when it will arrive (or when I'll be able to play much of it) but I'm glad I finally got it (and for a very reasonable price.)

Now Playing - "Hands off the panda!"

2010-10-03T23:55:00.001+01:00

I didn't find a huge amount of time this week to play games unfortunately, but here are some thoughts on what I did play. The main game I've been trying to get through, and the one I've played a fair bit of is Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (PSP). I've now played through two of the three character's stories (Terra and Ventus') and while some things are starting to feel a bit stale, they change enough each time you go back to the worlds with the various characters so it doesn't feel too boring. I really didn't like the some of the quests where you needed to fetch x items to continue...that bit in Ventus's story where I needed to find the goddamn bits for Cinderella's dress actually made me put the game down for a couple days. Things like that and the minigames being incredibly unforgiving pissed the hell out of me. Actually, in some really intense boss battles the fiddly nature of the command deck did kill me when I had to stop moving in order to cycle through to the command I wanted to use (like a Cure spell). Still, I'm enjoying the hell out of the game for the most part. It has some really epic battles. It does kind of seem like the story is running a bit thin now that I've been through it 3 times (even though the timelines are slightly overlapping)-it seems like every main plot event has been already, and things might be different in the bit after all 3 stories (I hope that the finale is good.)

The voice acting is really dissapointing. I don't care how much people want to try and defend it. Its not good in my books. Aqua feels so awkward, like she is struggling with every sentence. Terra is fairly dull and lifeless. It does have some fairly good performances, but they aren't brilliant. Xehanort and Master Yen Sid were two that slightly stood above the rest. I feel I'm forgetting someone but perhaps that is it in a nutshell. Forgettable voice acting. The soundtrack isn't overly impressive either.

As much as I've ranted here, it is a pretty decent game and I'm looking forward to finishing it off to see where the story goes. Anyway, I reckon I need about 5 or 10 hours to finish Aqua's story and the game completely. Might be able to do that this week, we shall see.

Lunar: Silver Star Harmony [demo] (PSP) So I played some of the demo of this game and wanted to get through it to get the clear save game if I ever got the full game when it was released but I put the demo down. It was just frustrating me that I couldn't save in the middle of it-I had to put my PSP into sleep mode each time instead of turning it off. Also meant I couldn't play KH until I finished the demo. So anyway, my intial thoughts on the game. (Keep in mind the fact that I never played the original games) It looks to have a fairly cool 90s anime style aesthetic, for the most part good although some characters and monsters do look horrendous. It has one of the ugliest dragons I've ever seen, fullstop. It has feathers and some ridiculous looking things that look like dog ears. Yeah, no thanks.

It has a fairly strange look to some of the menus, texts, symbols and icons. I'd even go so far as to say it looks like a flash game similar to like Adventure Quest or some RPG that someone has made themselves on RPGmaker or some crap.

It has some fairly boring combat at times, and what really annoyed me was that the enemies appear on the overworld and dungeons (ok, thats not bad) and they RUN FASTER THAN YOU. So if I want to evade them and skip by them to get through the dungeon quicker, no that won't work. I'll need to get a bit of luck so they don't see me. Fairly annoying, but I am curious to give this a better shot. I may play through the demo when I have some free time and have a buildup of patience somehow...

Blazblue: Calamity Trigger (360) I played some more of Blazblue and actually won some games online! Not many, but I'm up to like lv16 or so on the multiplayer. Frustrating how good some people are at fighting games...I think I'll definitely get the next game though when it comes out. I like this game too much not to.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS) I didn't put much more time into this game this week. I finished up a story mission and thats about it. Did some exploring, levelling and getting demons but didn't make much significant progress. I think its a fairly long game, so like Etrian Odyssey it will have to have my full attention if I intend to actually finish the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSlY5TJWkfU

Sorry for the short post (with no pictures, videos or whatever)-I'm not on my laptop at the moment. Will try and make it more interesting next week!

Aneemayz

2010-09-29T23:13:00.005+01:00

So I'm now part of the Anime society at my Uni, Glasgow Caledonian's 'Cali Otaku' society. I've only been to the first 2 meetings of the year but I'm somehow already the club's Secretary. It was more or less down to me knowing the president from last time I was at uni in Glasgow. I met him through Glasgow Uni's Anime & Manga Society and mentioned to him the other week that I might be interested in either of the current commitee positions if he needed someone. The Uni's student association requires commitees of all it's societies and clubs it seems, at least if they wish to be funded by the association. So getting the positions filled was essential to the survival of the club.

There weren't that many people interested in being on the commitee, leaving me and another guy to get the 2 free positions, secretary and treasurer. We weren't really bothered about which position we each got, so I got given the secretary position even though I don't know that many people in the club yet.

I think I'll be quite good at the position though, as I am fairly organised with my notes, timekeeping and writing.

Anyway, they have series which run for the entire academic year (one screening per week) as well as some series which were decided upon today. Its something they've been doing for a few years from what I've heard. The members bring in 2 pilot episodes of anime or other shows like live action stuff. After they've all been shown, the members vote on what shows they would like to see shown throughout the year.

We ended up deciding on High School of the Dead (which I just finished on my own the other week) and Toaru Kagaku no Railgun. I voted for Railgun as well as Pani-Poni Dash. My choices after that would have been Hellsing (which I've seen, but is pretty damn awesome) or some Live action thing that was about a guy whose thoughts can be heard out loud. It was a cool idea, I can't quite remember the name of it right now...

Anyway, I don't know what the purpose of this post is. Just a bit of what is going on. I might post some more about uni stuff and how the club goes, as I'm slightly skeptical whether I will enjoy it or get on with people there. I may rant about stuff in the future.

Also, I may do an Anime Impressions post on High School of the Dead, as I'll end up seeing the first 12 episodes twice overall it seems... sigh T_T I dunno, I did enjoy it but at the same time I didn't like the way the story slowed down and ended rather dissapointingly. Edit: I forgot I did an early impressions post of it already a while back.

Some PAL game release updates.

2010-09-28T21:45:00.001+01:00

So it seems waiting (for long periods of time) is the right way to do things if you are a PAL gamer with interests in anything remotely niche as I've found out recently.

Deathsmiles (360) For a long time after the US release it seemed like this game wouldn't be coming to Europe. I had considered importing it, but after reading up on the game, it turns out this one was region locked on the 360. Which is strange, because the developer Cave had intentionally left the region locking off a few of their releases to help the import community out. The strange thing is, I've not played many of these kind of games, and never played anything by Cave before, but after reading about it and seeing some video footage, I was really interested. Plus, the fact that this was the first one by the developer to actually come out in America was ringing alarm bells, and I had hoped it would come out in Europe and PAL regions as well. Well, it seems it will be. It hasn't been confirmed by Rising Star yet, but it will apparantely be coming out some time next year from them. I hope it isn't just a rumour, but I've found a few mentions of it online. Here's hoping! Gothic lolita characters, crazy bosses and 2D bullet hell shooter goodness-I'm sold!

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/40940/Cave-to-bring-boxed-shooter-to-West

http://uk.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/deathsmiles/review.html

Lunar: Silver Star Harmony (PSP) This one is confirmed to be coming over to our PSN sometime fairly soon I believe. First I heard of it was when I checked PSN the other night to find a demo up. I'd been interested in seeing what this game was like but after hearing mixed things, I decided the high price for importing might not necessarily be worth it if I didn't like the game that much. So I quickly decided to download the demo and then go searching for some news online. I've still not yet tried the demo (I'll play it and update this post once I've finished it) but it seems once the game is released on PSN (and it should be noted that it will be PSN only here) you will start your game with bonus gear of some kind if you decide to get the full game and still have data from the demo. So I'm definitely interested in this one as well. I'll try the demo and see if it will be my thing. It will be out in PAL regions on the 13th of October.

http://www.siliconera.com/2010/09/24/game-arts-bringing-lunar-silver-star-harmony-to-europe/

Blazblue: Continuum Shift (PS3/360) Us PAL gamers had to wait a fairly long time to get the first Blazblue game, and while we've not had such a long wait this time around, it seems excruciating at times how long we have to wait. I can't really describe why I feel so maniacal about Blazblue...I didn't play that much online on Blazblue: Calamity Trigger mainly because I sucked, but I had a lot of fun with the multiplayer both online and with my friends in person. I got the original game on the 360 but I'm perhaps leaning towards the free online play of the PS3 version this time around. It would probably suit my sporadic use of the online features slightly better. I have seen a few imported PS3 copies in one of the shops around here, but I'm going to wait and pick up the special edition when it comes out here.

I'm hoping they clear up some of the stupid things from the story mode. To 100% complete character's story modes you need to lose to each opponent, as well as finishing some in certain ways ie. with Distortion Drives or whatever they were called. The story was about as clear as mud as well, but hey...I had some fun with it. The first game had really nice graphics, music and characters. Hopefully this one will build upon the first's successes.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (PS3/360) This is probably one of my most anticipated games coming out for the rest of the year, and it was nearly going to sneak under my radar until I did this post because I don't have as much time to play games or trawl gaming news sites now that I've started uni. Anyway, I have high hopes for this one and I really don't want it to be just another generic God of War clone. With the talent involved in the making of the game, I'm really looking forward to its PAL release date of October 7th, or some time after that when I end up grabbing it. It comes out October 5th in North America and apparantely December 16th in Japan. I don't know the reasons behind that, or if its true to be honest.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-09-28-castlevania-lords-of-shadow-review

Other than those, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona was released recently on the PSN, along with Front Mission 3. The SMT franchise gained a substantial amount of fans outside of Japan in the past year or so with Persona 3 and 4 getting released, and this is where the Persona series started. I've heard mixed things about the game but I am tempted to pick it up, and its good to see games like this coming out here, even if it is just on PSN.

On another note, I took a look in one of the independent game shops in Glasgow and as always, saw lots of awesome stuff. On the import front they had SMT: Strange Journey, SMT: Persona (PSP), SMT: Devil Survivor, Disgaea Infinite, Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories and quite a few other titles I was interested in. I'm still looking out for Lucifer's Call (Nocturne) but I'm never gonna find it. I may ask them to order it in for me some time as a last resort.

Now Playing - "Reload this!"

2010-09-26T23:58:00.000+01:00

Now that I am two weeks into my uni course I'm starting to get an idea of how the timetable will be and what we will be doing throughout this semester at least. I'm enjoying it so far, even though it does look quite hard in places. Geometrical Optics is going to have some tricky physics type questions I think. Anyway I've had some free time but not a huge amount of time for games really, although I do have a long weekend just now (I've got Thursday-Monday off because of a Bank Holiday or something) and I've been playing some games during the last week or so. I've got some impressions on some relatively recent releases actually.

I played some of the Halo: Reach (360) multiplayer on Saturday and today when my friends brought it over. Took ages to initially set up as I hadn't configured my Xbox's online settings (I just got it back from being repaired.) but once we got it set up we played a bit of the multiplayer online. At first, I wasn't too impressed as there are a lot of things different to Halo 3 (and ODST I guess, but its closer to that than 3.) The main things putting me off were the health system similar to ODST, getting used to the new weapons and their slightly different gameplay and the armour abilities being rather annoying at times. Although, they all seem to have their strengths when used right. So they are kind of balanced from what I can tell after a few hours of playing and watching my friends use them.

The weapons feel much more tactile I guess (don't know if that is the right word), it actually feels like you are firing the weapon, with recoil and sound effects of really good quality. The sniper rifle was initially pretty strange for me, as the targeting reticule expands vastly after firing. So the recoil from the first shot basically stops you from getting another easy shot in straight succession-the result from what I can tell so far is that it is slightly harder to kill with it. But I got used to it pretty quickly, actually getting MVP on like the 2nd Team Snipers game I played. No-scopes ftw! They've also tweaked the meleeing to make that less abusable. I found myself shooting until the enemy's shields were down enough, meleeing and getting surprised how many times they would still be alive afterwards. So the shoot the shields down+melee combo from 3 seems to be a bit less easy to pull off. (Which is good) BR is also fairly different, it still has a scope but it fires less bullets with each shot it seems. Its called DMR now, dunno what that stands for... Still seems like a very strong weapon. Pistol seems to be going back to the Halo 1 & 2 days as well, its very fast and good at mid-long range. ODST had a similarly strong pistol..and I just hope they haven't made too many broken weapons.

What else...the veto system is gone from online. Now you vote on one from a selection of maps/games. The major flaw being the fact that if you are playing with more than 1 player on the xbox, all your votes go to the same selection. Terrible. Bring back the veto system. Along with the server issues, that is one thing that definitely needs to be adressed in the next patch or update.

Anyway, despite all those minor things, I got used to the game and had some fun with my friends on it. I'm kinda tempted to pick it up at some point..but there are so many games that are in that same boat...and in fact so many games I have and still have to start.

I've put in a fair chunk of time to Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (PSP) now and have been enjoying it for the most part. I'm 13 or so hours into Terra's story and liking the characters. Terra seems to have a bit more depth than say Roxas or Sora, at least so far. Its got some fairly cheesy dialogue, but then again, it is a Disney-Square Enix franchise, and its been pretentious and cheesy since the early days. If you didn't get a substantial helping of cheese you would probably feel ripped off in some way.

I'll start with some things that annoy me about it. Firstly, it seems a bit more bland than KH and KHII. I liked in the PS2 games how the worlds were slightly longer stages, you had cameo appearances from main characters from the disney films in question and the enemies and bosses had a distinctive feel related to the world depending on what Disney world you were in. For example, the Heartless and Nobodies in Agrabah actually fit in with the world. In Birth By Sleep, they basically reuse a lot of the same Unversed enemies. They don't seem to have a different appearance in each world. So it does feel a bit bland, short and boring at times. Its also missing the characters joining your party I think. They were one great thing about the KH games, as well as the party's appearance changing in each world. (Halloween Town designs for Sora etc were some of my favourites.)

Secondly, it really stretches the PSP to its limits in some areas, where you get some slowdown occurring. This might be a good thing as it shows they've really pushed the boat out, but for me it is a negative, as they could have accounted for this. When you get the option to choose between 16bit and 32 bit in the config menu and 16 bit is the default, that is an indicator that perhaps a different engine, or textures or whatever should have been used. I'm no games designer but something seems wrong there..just slightly though. I've not had too much slowdown on my current settings.

I don't like that there doesn't seem to be that many cameos from Disney characters though. I'm fairly far through Terra's story and really haven't seen anything of Mickey and anyone else. They added a distinctive flavour to KH and KHII, adding a lot to the feel of the worlds and the story. I think there should have been more cutscenes, not just ones focussing on Terra and his flashbacks. I guess I am less than a 3rd through the game though, so we shall see how it goes.

What else? Well, I am enjoying the game..which is a good thing. =p I'm liking that they've tried not too overcomplicate things with all this nonsense about nobodies, organisation XIII, Heartless, different worlds, experiments, masked guys. As good as Kingdom Hearts II was, it was bloody confusing. I dunno, I'm guessing they will start throwing some plot twists in there towards the end game of BBS, but so far I'm not hugely impressed with the story, but at least it is easy to understand. Xehanort is one of the most stereotypical 'Disney' villains I've seen...I could tell from a mile off that he was a bad guy. I'm still interested to see what is going to happen with him, the others and Terra. Must play more.

I would say that I like the Kingdom Hearts games, but I don't know if I would call myself a fanatic... Urgh...I don't want to start flame wars or anything. I just wanted to get across my initial feelings on Birth By Sleep. Even though I've highlighted some of it's shortcomings, I still think its a good game so far. I'm having a blast playing it so far.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS) I've been putting an hour or two into this here and there, and slowly getting through the second sector, codenamed Bootes. I'm enjoying it so far, its got a distinctive SMT vibe going on, with some gameplay aspects from other games in the series. Some are quite dated, like the negotiation system which frustrates me greatly at times. I don't like that you can only have 10 or so Demons at the same time as well..I'm terrible at deciding on which to fuse and which to keep...but I'll get used to that, 10 is more than enough really. I really don't like when your demons level up and want to learn new moves. Its the same as in Nocturne I think, the old move will be replaced, not always with an improved one. You can't tell what move is going to be learnt, but then again you can just stop them from learning the new move to start with..It seems clunky and unneccessary(I can never spell that word.) So I'm around 10 or so hours in and think I'm getting near the end of the Bootes sector. I found a sidequest I want to do though; it involves escorting some of the decoy squad back through the dungeon, and fighting a rather nasty boss. When I last played it got a cheap Mudo (instant death) spell on my main character giving me a game over after I had hacked away at it for a good 5-10 minutes. So I've not played it since then..apparantely that is a SMT recurring theme across many of the games, instant deaths...

I will go back to it some time soon, as I'm enjoying what I've seen so far. I'm just catching up to around the same play time in Kingdom Hearts (although I've put in more time to BBS than SJ now, probably to do with the pacing.)

New Xbox! =D

2010-09-24T01:54:00.004+01:00

I got my Xbox 360 fixed finally! Hopefully no more Red Rings for moi! T_T

Dunno if I'll even have enough time to play it though, with uni and all. Think I'll check and see if my Gold subscription is still on, might jump online for a bit. =p

Rather randomly, I got to Radiant Garden in Birth by Sleep. Its pretty cool how you get to see what its like before the main 2 games when it is known as Hollow Bastion. I always liked that area, its nicely designed and has really cool music, which they have kept a similar track for in BBS. Here's 3 of them, Radiant Garden and Hollow Bastion songs from the OSTs:

Now Playing - "Whats Tibetan for RPG?"

2010-09-19T23:40:00.001+01:00

I've had a fairly hectic week so far as I just went back to uni on Monday 13th. I didn't think I'd have many classes until this coming week, but the uni has started doing things a bit differently and having lectures and everything else in the first week. So we were thrown in the deep end a bit but I got used to the routine fairly quickly. I didn't have much time for games but because I didn't have my laptop through with me I wasn't able to do a post last week so this one will cover stuff I played for the last 2 weeks.

I was playing a lot of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3) on Hard and Crushing difficulty. I managed to finish Hard mode without too many problems, and surprisingly didn't find it boring or stale (this was my 2nd time playing it.) I enjoy the pacing and variety between the stages. They have you doing different things throughout the game. There are a few places where I don't particularly like going through, like the bit with the tank going through the village streets for example... Its a really fun game, both multiplayer and story mode and a fairly easy one to platinum if you are into that sort of thing. There are a few tricky trophies in there, killing 75 enemies in a row without dying and beating it on crushing, for example. I'm not much of a trophy whore, never really been that into getting them all unless I like the game enough to play more of it. I reckon I will try and get the rest of the medals, trophies and unlockables in this game though. Its definitely a must have for PS3 owners, I know most have already played this by now, but anyone out there who hasn't, I'd recommend this once more. Also, if you guys have any suggestions or recommendations for games that are similar (in terms of overall enjoyment factor) I welcome them. But I should note I'm not the greatest platformer fan. I know Uncharted 2 does things differently to what it used to be like, but it still feels limited compared to what Assassin's Creed did. I liked some aspects of AC, but it really dissapointed me overall and as a result, I've not tried the 2nd one. I probably will when its dirt cheap, its in the same boat as Bayonetta, Dante's Inferno and the Bioshock games for me.

I've managed to find around 13 or 14 hours somewhere to put into Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS) and I've really liked it so far. The game world has really drawn me in, from the environments and quality of the script describing things and building up the story to the music, which is something else. Its really powerful operatic stuff, with some kind of gregorian chanting(?) on a lot of the tracks. Very deep and dark and really adds to the seriousness of the game. Perhaps the way the characters react to certain situations is a bit flat, but then it would get old if they were questioning things every two seconds. Teams like the ones in the game would probably be prepared for the unexpected from the outset. The Demon Negotiations are probably the most frustrating bit for me, as I#m trying to register as many as I can. It seems very trial and error and even then it is very unpredictable and hard to succeed at.

It looks like there is a lot to do, but I am making progress probably quicker than I did with DDS and Devil Survivor (the only other SMT games I've played) as the gameplay difficulty seems to be fairly balanced. It doesn't seem overly easy, but sometimes you will get randomly and cheaply owned by either getting surprise attacked, critted or having all the enemies pwn your main guy at once. Definitely enjoying it so far though.

Other than those main games, I played little bits of A Witch's Tale (DS) and Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS). My first impression of A Witch's Tales is not very good so far, the combat is really poor. Battles go on way too long and even normal enemies can wipe you out from time to time. It actually started out as an action RPG in Japan I believe, and for some reason was changed to a turn based RPG for English audiences. I like the style and characters, it has a slightly Nightmare before Christmas/fairytale world and I quite like it even though at times it does feel a bit childish, like it was intended for younger audiences. Graphically, it doesn't look particularly great but its nothing horrendous. I'm willing to let it slide perhaps, when or if I go back to the game. I put the cart away after only putting in around 2 or 3 hours to it..that was partially down to wanting to play Strange Journey though. Dragon Quest IX's postgame stuff is as hard as always, I've not quite made the jump up because I don't know exactly where to go first or what missions to do first. I do want to play more of it but its kind of impenetrable to me currently. I really liked playing through DQIX and want to give it some more of my time at some point, even though it might actually be impossible for me to 100%, depending on whether or not I can get Treasure maps some way other than going to events like PAX or whatever in America... T_T

I finally got my hands on Kingdom Hearts: BBS! Hopefully I'll find some time to try it out (and not drop SMT:SJ as a result.)

Now Playing - "You mocking the power of vegetables?!"

2010-09-05T23:11:00.000+01:00

Earlier in the week I was just playing Valkyria Chronicles (PS3) in an effort to finish it before the weekend. For the 30 or so hours it took me, I was pretty addicted at times to this strategy rpg. I think the story and a lot of the characters were what kept me really intrigued by it. At times some of the battles are just downright frustrating and cheap, and I kind of felt bad abusing some of the gameplay features, like reselecting scouts to cover massive distances and capture bases, leapfrog units from base to base, use snipers or lancers to take out targets from distance by reloading until they got the hit I wanted etc etc. There are many flaws to the battle system I think and I feel they really should have reworked some stuff for the sequel, but I've heard it hasn't changed that much in the places where it really should have. Still, this game is way up on my list of strong PS3 games. It plays very much like a manga or comic reads in some ways, with some very nice cutscenes driving the exposition between battles. The bulk of the game is probably in these cutscenes in fact. This is good for the characterisation, the characters are fleshed out a lot and grow a lot throughout the game, conflicts giving way over time as people's views opened up and they got to know each other. Rosie and Isara's relationship was one that really interested me and tugged at my heartstrings in a critical plot point roughly midway(?) the game. So sad at times this game ;_;

I love the cel-shaded style of the game. The characters are pretty well designed and some of the cutscenes look absolutely amazing. In fact I have my eye on one of the artbooks for it. Its a massive book, at around 400 pages I believe. Hey, I didn't realise there was an anime of VC :O Might have to check that out, and hopefully the sequel soon. I might try and get the new PSP game for my birthday.

I started a new game on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3) on Hard difficulty as I was enjoying playing the multiplayer (plus PSN seems to be quite inconsistent recently) and me and my friends put in an hour or two, getting to chapter 4 or 5. I really like this game's exciting, smooth and dynamic platforming. As a shooter, it is not quite as good as some other straight up shooters on the market at the moment, but it is still a really well polished, well presented game. I might check out the original game at some point, but I know its going to be a few steps backwards from this one.

I've been kind of casually playing Etrian Odyssey (DS) on and off, grinding up and getting near the end of the 1st stratum. I can tell I'll get to the stratum boss with some semblance of confidence and get absolutely pwned and put in my place. This game seems to do that a lot. FOE FOE!! I might stop playing this and start up Strange Journey, who knows...

We played some multiplayer on Blazblue: Calamity Trigger (360) and Super Street Fighter IV (360) over the weekend when my friends were over, but we couldn't get online thanks to the crappy wireless adapter. Thats one reason I would consider getting one of the New model 360s, but then again I don't like the look of it, I wouldn't have any saves on it and I'd have to pay whatever stupid amount they are. But anyway, Blazblue can be a lot of fun, even though I suck at it. I'm definitely getting the new one when it comes out here..I was actually tempted to get it when I saw an import copy for the PS3 in one of the shops I was in. Still, I'd probably rather wait for the EU version so I can get nice preorder stuff, or the limited edition, we shall see =p I started to pick up Noel and Jin more, as Rachel wasn't working out too well. I'm not sure who I will use in the new one because I heard Rachel has been nerfed completely...

I was going to pick up Valkyria Chronicles II, but one of the shops we went to had a lot of imported psp and ds games. It was between Lunar PSP, Disgaea Infinite, Valkyria Chronicles II (which is out here) and SMT: Strange Journey. I went for Strange Journey in the end, as I had a lot of fun with Devil Survivor and DDS. I've still not played any of the Persona games...heresy I know!

I'm not exactly sure what to play next, as I'll be going to uni a week on Monday. So I might not have my 360 or PS3 available for a while. Probably best to pick up a DS or PSP game, one that is good for short blasts during any free time I might have between classes would be best. I've got a few games that I've started and put on hold for a while now, Valkyrie Profile Lenneth, Breath of Fire III PSP and I'm wanting to play through Golden Sun: The Lost Age (perhaps the first one as well, but I think my cart is corrupted in some way)

Anime Impressions - High School of the Dead

2010-09-05T20:55:00.005+01:00

After a long period of being not that into anime or manga, I've slowly started watching some stuff again. Its kind of complicated why it fell out of favour with me, but the show I've been trying to force myself back in with (half-heartedly at least) is High School of the Dead; an ongoing series that a lot of people seem to be talking about.

So after I was showed some snippets by my friend I was quite interested in this, and so far I've watched the first episode. So because I can't comment on the majority of it, this will be my very initial impressions of it.

The opening, wow. XD Fanservicey to the max, I approve of this. I don't know if it portrays quite what the first episode was like though. I can't quite imagine the rest of the show leaning towards fanservice in a different way from what they did in the #1. Its basically just an occasional thing, they don't seem to go over the top on panty shots and whatnot. I hope it doesn't turn into a RosarioXVampire thing or anything...the 2nd season of that looked ridiculous. Like, I think over emphasis on random needless fan service can detract from anime at times. So far in this one, I've not seen too much to be worried about. Wow, in trying to find a pic from google the majority are really NSFW lol...

Ok so I was wrong, in ep2 they just introduced the Nurse, Miss Shizuka who seems to have impossibly big boobs and seems to be all about fanservice so far XD

Its a nice, brutal-a good introduction back into anime for me. I usually tend to go for either mecha shows, vampire, sci-fi stuff and the occasional comedy anime and I don't think I've ever seen a pure zombie anime. I don't know if there are many to be honest. I'm quite a fan of live action zombie stuff, so at least so far it seems like a breath of fresh air. It might get old as the series goes on, I'll have to see. Seems like good mindless fun and I'll enjoy watching the rest of it.

There are many places to stream it online, I'm currently using http://www.animeshippuuden.com/ I may have to acquire the episodes so I can play them on my big TV though...

Here's some more info for you:

Animenewsnetwork

Wikipedia

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love Review

2010-09-02T21:40:00.000+01:00

OK, time for another review! This time it is on a Wii title that I was willing to pass on when I first heard about it, as it didn't exactly sound like my thing. The more I saw of it however, the more curious I became, and by the time it was announced for European audiences by publisher NIS America, I was curious enough to want to pick it up. I had read a few reviews and heard positive things about it, so what did my experience of this first of the series to be brought outside of Japan turn out to be?

Well, I was pleasantly surprised by this light hearted strategy rpg that is as full of anime cliches as it is cheese and mechs. For my first experience of the series, I was very satisfied and in future would definitely pick up other games in the series if they are ever readily available in English. Importing the titles for me isn't that appealing. Not because I am afraid I wouldn't like the games, its just down to the amount of dialogue and text that would be a bit of a barrier to enjoying the games. My Japanese is only the most basic understanding, so I would need to use a guide for understanding the stories.

Before I start, I should note that this review is for the Wii version of the game, as we didn't get the PS2 version over here in Europe. I'll try and keep this review spoiler free as well.

Story and Characters

The story takes part in an alternate universe full of steampunk mechs and strangely advanced technology, this really got me interested in the game, but unfortunately wasn't utilised as well as it could have been, apart from the mechs and some other technology. More emphasis seems to fall on the characters and how they interact with each other. The story follows Shinjiro Taiga, an ensign that travels to 1920s New York to lead a fighting troupe disguised as a musical troupe to defeat an evil warlord and his subordinates from conquering America as its kingdom. Yeah, it sounds like something from Power Rangers or some ridiculous anime and at times it basically is. If you go into this expecting a deep, dark, serious story you will probably be dissapointed. Or at least, you won't get that, but hopefully you will enjoy it regardless. I had a lot of fun with it.

The characters are probably where the focus of the game lies. The amount of dialogue and character building throughout this relatively short (20 or 30 hrs) RPG is quite impressive. Shinjiro is at first not taken seriously by the rest of the squad. He came over to America in place of his father or uncle, who was some kind of legend in the military. So he has to prove himself worthy, and does so slowly throughout the game. Within the game, of the 8 chapters, there are 5 or 6 which are mainly devoted to telling backstory of one of the other girls in the squad as they either join the squad or have some problem that needs to be solved. Through these chapters, you learn more about the character's past and it uncovers a lot about them.

Gemini Sunrise
A very cheerful cowgirl who tends to be a bit clumsy. Her master's last words bring her from Texas to New York with her horse, Larry(?!). She is very interested in Japanese culture and tends to daydream often.
Sagiitta Weinberg (Cheiron Archer in the English language version)
A strong-willed lawyer who practices out of Harlem. She is very intelligent and is recognized for her exceptional perseverance, toughness, independence and confidence. She serves as a sub-antagonist in Episode 2 as she works with Steam Frontier to demolish her hometown of Harlem. After facing her in a mock trial, Shinjiro helps remind her why she studied law in the first place and becomes closer with him.
Rikaritta Aries (Rosarita Aries in the English language version)
A Mexican markswoman and bounty hunter despite being only 11 years old. She is very energetic with an abundant appetite and obsession with food.
Diana Caprice
A local birdwatcher who is incredibly compassionate. She is a doctor in training who has initially given up all hope to live until Shinjiro comes and gives her the hope she needed to keep going, despite everything she's been through.
Subaru Kujo
Subaru's true gender and age are completely unknown, though the character tends to use pronouns such as "herself" when speaking in the third person. However, Subaru is definitely a noble from a Japanese family and excels at Noh and other traditional Japanese dances.

There are a few supporting characters in Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love include Ratchet Altair, a former captain of the European Star Division and captain of New York's Fighting Troupe until Shinjiro replaces her, she becomes the vice-commander soon after; Michael Sunnyside, the commander of the Star Division; Cherry Cocker (Plum Spaniel in the Japanese version) and Anri Yoshino of the Rainbow Division, who help the Star Division in battles; Yuichi Kayama of the Moon Division, who owns a Romando shop; and Xingzhi Wong (Gyouchi Oh in the Japanese language version), who is the designer of the STARs and owns a Chinese restaurant. Unfortunately, many of these supporting characters aren't developed as much as they could have been I felt. Yuichi, for example, remains way too mysterious.

You might be able to tell from these characters that the game has an intensely Japanese feel to it, and you would be correct on that. Despite being set in America, the Japanese culture seems to be deeply ingrained in the game. I found that strange at times but appreciated it as we don't get many games like this. The characters are very strong and over the top and really make this game succeed in my opinion.

Gameplay

In Sakura Wars: So Long My Love, the gameplay is split into two sections-Adventure Mode and Battle Mode. Adventure mode is where you will spend time with the other characters, talk with them and look for various things around the city, all the while building your friendships and relationships with the other members of the New York Combat Revue's Star Division, who, as it turns out, are all girls who you can eventually go out with. Yeah, it definitely feels like a harem anime at times. There is quite a bit of variation in Adventure mode. You will usually have some kind of goal or deadline, before which you should try and accomplish or find something. Outside of that, you will usually have a lot of leeway; you can do things as you see fit. You will have to make a lot of choices, and these come in the forms of multiple choice responses to questions or conversations. Sakura Wars uses the "LIPS" system, seen in many of the other games in the series. There are four types of the LIPS system, these consist of Normal LIPS, which is displayed when the player must make a decision in a certain time period. If you run out of time, you will get a hidden response(usually not a good one); Analog LIPS, which the player can raise the action gauge up or down depending on the situation ie. to shout if you raise the gauge, or speak quietly if you decrease the gauge; Double LIPS, which gives the player a longer amount of time to make important decisions; and Stick LIPS, where the player can manipulate the Analog Sticks to follow commands on screen and raise gauges depending on the situation. As you go through the game, your relationships between Shinji and the other characters grow for better or worse depending on the choices you take, and this is how your characters become stronger in battle. If you are getting on well with a certain character, they will get boosts to their stats in battle; do more damage, take less damage and so on. For me, that was quite an interesting idea in a strategy rpg-there is no grinding to keep up, instead it ties the Adventure mode and the Battle mode together really well. It also puts some degree of challenge into the game. If you screw up a lot of the questions, and this is fairly easy to do in some chapters, where it seems like you are supposed to fall out of favour with the character the chapter focuses on, then you will find it hard to keep that character alive in battle. One thing that frustrated me a lot was that when the character falls in battle, they dislike you even more. I could rage on the stupidness of that...sure I am in control of their actions, but it was their fault they didn't like me to begin with, so they hate me even more when they get themselves killed in battle? @#"%! off! Anway, it didn't really get to the stage that the characters hated me, there are always plenty of options to get them back on your good side. And I can see that they were trying to make the game a bit more tricky.

Battle mode is where you and your team pilot their mechs in a strategy RPG battle system. There is no grid, but similar to say Valkyria Chronicles, when you select a unit, they will have a limit to how many actions they can perform in that turn. There are quite a few options you can choose from: normal attacks, joint attacks, unique supermoves for each character, healing, defending and perhaps some others that I can't remember. There are overall mission strategems that Shinjiro can select on his turn. These skew your characters in one of three directions in terms of stats. You can also transform into the mobile forms of your mechs for aerial battles in certain battles. Sometimes this is used for moving between areas of the battlefield and at other times you need to fight battles in these forms. This adds a whole new layer of depth to the battles and I appreciated this function. I mean, transforming mechs! How can that not make a game better?! =D

The game is relatively easy once you get used to it. I actually died on the first battle, but after that I got used to it and didn't have many problems until one or two battles right at the end that I had to retry a few times.

Graphics

Graphically, this game isn't the best titles I've seen on the Wii, far from it. The only times that this really bugged me at all was during the battles, when it doesn't look particularly good in places. I mean, the graphics don't look terrible but they aren't exactly very standout either. They are kinda basic polygonal mechs with not the most detail in their designs, but hey, I wasn't that bothered about them. The graphics, while not the best, didn't particularly detract from my experience of the game. Some of the attacks in battle are nice and flashy, which is good. The character portraits are fairly well done for the most part.

It does have some gorgeous anime cutscenes, there are a fair few more than a lot of other RPGs out there which only usually have one or two. Still, I would have liked more of these cutscenes.

Audio

The soundtrack to this game fits well with what you would imagine 1920s New York to sound like, and is fairly consistent all the way throughout. Perhaps there are not quite enough tracks, but I thought some of the tracks felt a bit overused. I was starting to get sick of the same songs after a while, even though the game isn't particularly long. Little things like that can begin to grate on my nerves subconsciously for me, at least.

The songs in there are fairly upbeat and catchy, with others that are a bit more serious during certain scenes. Kohei Tanaka's work on this game fits pretty well.

Overall: 8/10

This is a fun, light hearted game that is probably best enjoyed if you are a fan of anime, strategy rpgs, mechs and perhaps dating sims or visual novels. Its a bit of a mix of all of those things and the result is very Japanese and very enjoyable. It may seem on the short side at 20 or so hours, but there is a lot of replayability in there if you want to try and get all the endings. I think there is one for each of the main girls in the story. I'd recommend this Wii title, I liked what I saw of it.

I'd give it a 8/10. The only reason I'd drop 2 marks would be for perhaps the shortcomings in the story and some of the areas feeling a little bland and lacking depth, ie. some battles.

Now Playing - "Its time to churn!"

2010-08-30T22:02:00.005+01:00

Ok, I would have posted this yesterday but I ended up going out for drinks with some friends. We went to Hive which had a metal/rock/punk kind of night on. I don't think I've been on Sunday before, can't really remember. It was pretty dead and I only had limited money to spend on stuff. Drinks were £1 each though, so not too bad a night.

Looks like we won't be playing Super Street Fighter IV at Daves for a while, Aaron got annoyed, chucked the controller across the room only for it to land on the xbox and dislodge the disc and scratch it to fuck. Joe got so pissed off...

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked..

I was aiming to finish off Ys Seven (PSP) story last week (Sun-Sun) and did so, its a fairly short game for an RPG, and seemed to have to drag itself out a little bit, but its an enjoyable game. It was a good positive introduction to the series for me I thought. It has really frantic fast paced button mashy combat which is pretty fun. Its on the verge of being an action game as opposed to an RPG if you look at some aspects of it, like combat.

Omg...blogger signed me out so I lost half of what I was going to say..

Well, I had some fun with the game even though the story is pretty generic and predictable. One or two twists in there keep it interesting though. Some of the cutscenes and fact that you have to go to dungeon after dungeon getting each of the shrines unsealed and then the sanctums one after the other-I didn't especially like that slightly lazy game design. Still, its a pretty cool introduction to the Ys series, at least for me. I'll probably pick some more titles up when Xseed localises them, or I might track down the existing game on the ps2/psp. I think thats about it that we got over in europe, but not sure.

I only picked up a PS3 relatively recently so I am playing catch up on a lot of the big exclusive titles, and at least for fans of the RPG genre, this is one of them. It has its cult following, but a lot of things about it will probably not appeal to the mainstream market, but I am going to try and recommend it to as many people as I can. So what game am I talking about? Valkyria Chronicles (PS3) - I started this up the other day and I've been enjoying it apart from some ridiculous frustrating battles. There are some gameplay balance issues which means you can either abuse them or see the enemy do the same (occassionally, depending on what units the AI has and whether they use them right.)

It has absolutely gorgeous cel-shaded presentation, I'm really liking that side of it. The character designs and the way everything looks, sound effects popping up like in a comic, textures, effects, backgrounds, environments, graphically I can't fault it. In fact so far I'm finding this game hard to fault. Perhaps difficulty might put some people off, for me I haven't minded too much yet. I kept going on a sort of trial and error basis, slowly learning from my mistakes on where to position, what troops to use, etc. Some of the controls for actually positioning where you want to go don't feel as tight as they could be perhaps though.

Still, I'm definitely liking this game so far. I'm aiming to finish it by Friday, but I seriously doubt that I'll make that. I won't have as much time to play it during the weekend as my friends are coming over if everything goes to plan, and we are going to do stuff from Friday to Monday. Shortly after that I'll be off to uni... *nervous*

The sequel(second in series, I'm not sure if it is a prequel/sequel) is actually coming out fairly soon for the psp. In fact, a lot of trailers are up, along with a demo on psn at the moment. That didn't really factor into it when I chose to play it, but it makes sense as I wanted to see what all the fuss is about for this game, and as a big srpg/trpg fan(listen to RPGcast#142 and Active Time Babble#21 and you'll understand this pointless semantic differentiation-imo they are one and the same.) I wanted to experience this before I go back to uni and might not have access to my ps3.

There are some trailers for you to see what I mean, and one about the sequel if you are interested. I've not watched more than the first second or two of the 2nd one as I don't want to spoil it, but I think its the recent English trailer, its from Machinima.

Pain...

2010-08-28T02:23:00.005+01:00

I had to go for my check up and appointment with the dentist and hygienist on Friday. I've known for a few months or so that I would need to get 1 or 2 of my Wisdom teeth out as they were growing in at the wrong angle and would cause pressure on my other teeth. So I had to get 1 taken out on Friday. Its sore, and a strange pain...kind of comes and goes in dull waves. I don't like it... T_T

And I still need to get the other top one out next time I go along...no fair!

I put some time into Ys on the Friday as I had most of the day on trains getting to and from my dentists, so I'll probably hit my aim of finishing the story by Sunday. I'll post some impressions in Sunday's Now Playing post.

Anyway, I need to catch up on sleep now. ~o~ *ZZZzzzzzzzzzz

Woohoo!

2010-08-26T17:09:00.003+01:00

Yay! I got into the course at uni I had applied for! My appeal must have gone through successfully =D

After all that stress, emailing, phonecalling, finding certificates, jumping through hoops it paid off! Good times! So I'll start work on my 2nd degree on the 13th of September I believe. I'll have less free time from then on, but I'm back on track again at least. =)

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies Review

2010-08-25T14:00:00.001+01:00

I thought I'd try get back into reviewing games as I've not done any since I was involved in my Final Fantasy marathon, of sorts. I'm always looking to improve on my review writing though, I tend to go on about things a bit uneccessarily, in terms of length. Plus the rating system is something I've always struggled with. Currently, I'm using a rating out of 10 points (10=top), with individual ratings for certain categories ie. Graphics, Gameplay and a few others, you'll see which ones over the course of this review. (If you read it)

So, first a little about my experience of the series and some background. I'm a fan of the Dragon Quest series, I have been for a few years since I initially played Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 (one of the spin off titles) many years ago. I actually picked up a copy of the first Dragon Warrior Monsters when one of my good friends randomly sent it out to me in along with a lot of other stuff, but thats another story. I've played DQIV and V on the DS (the recent remakes) and really enjoyed them. I'm definitely looking forward to picking up the last of those 3 games when it is released eventually. Dragon Quest VI will be remade for the DS at some point soon, I'm hoping. I still need to get around to playing Dragon Quest VIII on the PS2, I've heard a lot of good things about it, plus based on what I've liked about the series, I might pick up some of the older games at some point if I can find them. So how does this one rank in terms of an entry point to the series? Well, in short, I think it is a fairly good entry point. Similar to Final Fantasy, there isn't any overarching story between the games, so you don't have to worry about not having played I through VIII before this. Secondly, this one has many of the core aspects fans of the series enjoy, but mixes things up slightly as well, and has some features that will keep people interested, such as the job system, side quests etc. Lastly, this one is not a massively long game, and has a good difficulty balance-it isn't overly grindy or hard so newcomers will not necessarily be turned off. By no means do I believe I am an expert on the series, so hopefully that is clear and hopefully that viewpoint will resonate with some of you out there in reading this review-maybe some of you are in similar situations having played a few of the games and enjoyed them.

Gameplay

Ok, starting with the gameplay. This is one area in which the games are very similar it seems. The fans love the games because of the traditional feel to them-from what I've heard they haven't deviated much from the original games in terms of the battle system, lengthy dialogue explaining things, menus and many other things. So its clear that you have to be ok with the relatively (some might say) archaic gameplay mechanics in order to enjoy these games. Personally, I am fine with this. I don't want to over-generalise, but many jrpgs and some western rpgs still reuse a lot of the unique features that were seen years ago in the genre. Anyway, I am going off on a tangent.

So where to start? The battle system perhaps. The battle system in this is pretty standard stuff. It has the same commands as some of the other games in the series; you can set up tactics and lineup in the middle of battles (but it isn't that important, I didn't use those once the whole game.) You have standard attacks, spells, abilities, as well as Coup de Grace attacks (basically limit break type attacks depending on the vocation your character has.) So there is quite a lot of depth to the battle system, mainly coming from the different attacks and abilities each enemy has, and the ones your party has access to. It is quite a traditional turn based battle system, basically the same as IV and V although they do make this one look a lot better. The enemies move and the backgrounds are fairly nice but nothing groundbreaking. I do like that when you've selected your moves, the characters and enemies move around the battlefield in order to launch their attacks. It reminded me of FFXIII. Its kind of unneccessary but makes it more interesting to look at. One thing that was absent from this game was the monster recruiting seen in other games in the series. It added a lot in my opinion and would have liked it if this one had that feature. Although there is plenty more to make up for the lack of that.

There is a lot of optional content to partake in. There are 184 sidequests, including the ones that have to be unlocked via wi-fi. These range from simple fetch quests, item quests and alchemy quests to very challenging combat related accomplishments which might unlock one of the 12(?) vocations and quests involving grottoes, which are pretty challenging postgame dungeons. I'll mention quickly that there is a lot to do after the main story. You'll definitely get your money's worth with this game. Other than the quests, there is the Wardrobe and Item List, the Alchemy list (I can't spell it off the top of my head) and Accolades, which are essentially titles given when you reach certain milestones ie. 1000 battles or progress in your main character's skill tree. Some might not really be that bothered about the accolades, but I think they could be fun to get, and definitely add to the list of things to do, at least for some people.

Traditional stuff: Saving in churches, still there of course, although the quicksave is there and is a welcome addition for a portable game. I used it a few times when I had to get off the bus or whatever. You still need to go to a churce to find out how much exp you need to level up, but there is a spell to make up for that. Thats a minor addition, but it does show that they were trying to move away from some of the pointlessly annoying mechanics. Which brings me to the next point, there are no random encounters in this game, instead, you've got monsters appearing on the world map or dungeon you are in, similar to a lot of games now ie. Tales of Symphonia. If you touch the enemies, you then get drawn into one of the turn based battles. This might have annoyed purists and it can be annoying when you are trying to farm certain enemies such as Metal Slimes, but it does help in places for example when you have to backtrack or run a large distance across the map. Personally, I'd probably rather have the random battles, but its not to say I don't like this system. I enjoyed this as a slight departure from the standard of the series.

I've been going on about the gameplay for about 3 years now, so I'll quickly run over the last few things. There is a strong multiplayer aspect to this game, you can do co-op multiplayer via a local network ie. you need to be in ds-ds close range. But what happens is your friends replace any of your 3 'NPC' characters, well NPC isnt right..I mean they replace any of the characters in your party who are not your main character. I think they get boosted experience while doing this, so that is something I haven't tried but could be fun. You can also do multiplayer things with Treasure Maps and other stuff. In some ways, the game seems intended for this multiplayer, which of course would have had a better chance of taking off in Japan with the serie's success there. Perhaps the game would have benefited from wi-fi multiplayer available from the start, and the Japanese release. So does the game feel weaker as a result of this multiplayer aspect? I don't think so. It doesn't feel essential, but it feels like it could be very seamless and easy to set up. I'd have to experience it to say more though.

Gameplay: 9/10

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Story and Characters

The story in Dragon Quest IX started out full of promise for me. The story starts out in the Observatory, a stronghold in the sky inhabited by the Celestrians, a winged guardian angel race essentially. Your character (which you can customise in a fairly deep creator) basically has to protect and help out the mortals in the realm of the Protectorate below, in order to gather crystallised Benevolessence (yeah, some stupid names in this game.) The story takes a bit of a twist and you are forced to gather up Fyggs. This takes the form of mini stories involving different towns, and usually a dungeon and boss to solve a major plot quest. I felt this stop start story telling went on a bit too long, you have to gather up 7 Fyggs from what I remember, and meanwhile the main story is essentially put on hold. It leaves a lot of things to the end, in which it picks up a bit, but I was still feeling a bit confused when I first learned of the character who was to be the end boss. The story could have been handled better, but I did enjoy it when it worked. The characters in this game are another area in which the game could have been a lot stronger. The main character and the Celestrians are fairly interesting, we see them at the start and through various points in the story, but perhaps not enough is shown of Apus Major and the other ones. I would have liked more cutscenes interspersed throughout the game, especially during the Fygg collecting bit of the story. Stella, the fairy that joins you throughout your quest is actually quite funny and a good addition. My main gripe about the characters is that the 3 other party members do not talk or have any personality. This is due to the fact that they easily swap out in the event of co-op multiplayer. They are also randomly generated using the character creator. Although you can make your own if you are not happy, you could end up with some bizarre looking silent party members. To be honest, I didn't mind the fact that they didn't have any dialogue. A lot of RPGs are similar in that respect, plus I like the fact that you have a lot of customisation options, in terms of appearance and vocation for your party.

Story and Characters: 7/10

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Graphics

For a DS game, Dragon Quest IX actually looks pretty good. While its obviously not up to the level of Dragon Quest VIII, a PS2 game, textures and colours look pretty good. It seems it is in the same direction as VIII, a semi-cel shaded look for this one. They had the same developers on board for this one and it does show. Things are outlined in black and look quite bold and vibrant. There is a lot of detail put into the important characters and the polygonal stuff never looks too rough or pixelated (not obtrusively so, at least.)

The graphics in battle look really good compared to the remakes of IV and V. Everything is smooth: the enemies and your character's models are very well done, and move around the battlefield without any technical issues. The font and numbers in battle, for displaying damage etc are clear, easy to read and link in with the sound effects very well.

The monsters, many of which are staples of the series are well animated and well rendered, especially in the overworld and dungeons. As for cutscenes, they look very nice in this game, with a sketchy, watered down colour look to them. They look good in my opinion and don't seem to tax the DS hardware that much. Take a look at this video and see what I mean. Of course, a bit is lost in quality in the transition to youtube, but you'll at least understand what I mean by the style.

So, it has a nice graphical style throughout, the only real flaw I can note is that there is slowdown in places on the overworld and towns. This only seems to happen occasionally when you have a full party of 4 and there is a lot going on in the area. Its isn't crippling, just a very minor slowdown of things. It might annoy some people, but it is on the verge of unnoticeable. Very good looking game in terms of a DS title. You can tell it was developed with the DS in mind.

Graphics: 8.5/10

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Audio

I was speaking about the combo system in battle earlier. Think of it as a Zelda: Wind Waker style combo system linked with the sound effects. If your characters hit an enemy in close succession, you will get a boost in damage, 1.2x and so on, indicated by a sound effect. This was a nice addition and the sound here is integrated very well.

Overall, the audio quality is good for a DS game, but many of the actual tracks weren't that memorable. They do fit in with the tone of a lot of the scenes though. I feel they won't be given much credit, as they don't jump out and scream in your face, if you know what I mean. Instead, they are well orchestrated pieces of music by the series composer Koichi Sugiyama. The tone of the story in many places is actually quite dark and sad and some of these pieces fit quite well with the melancholy mood. Some songs are nice and light though as well, like the Tavern song. The battle theme is fairly average, but it works. Its the "I Won't Lose" video below.

Audio: 7/10

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So overall, I do recommend this game-I had a lot of fun with it and I intend to go back and do more of the postgame optional stuff at some point. The game isn't perfect, but I think its nearly right up there amongst my favourite DS games, despite its few flaws. So if you are one of the people who haven't picked this up and are interested in it, go out and get it. I hope you'll enjoy it. If you weren't interested in this to begin with and managed to read all the way to here, well, thank you! =D I hope I've sold you on this game, which as with all Dragon Quest games, has a lot of charm. There is something about them that always draws me in. This is a solid title, and comes recommended.

Overall: 8/10

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Information on the game:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_quest_ix

http://dragonquest.nintendo.com/

http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/games/nds/dragon_quest_ix_sentinels_of_the_starry_skies_17296.html

Upcoming Review Schedule.

2010-08-24T23:35:00.010+01:00

Woot! I'm writing some reviews again! I must have too much time on my hands. They are kinda like ninjas on this site, seldom seen...and..they have throwing stars..(gimme a break, I had to make that awesome pic relevant XD) I don't know if you guys care about reviews much, hopefully you do. Feel free to leave me feedback though, as I'm always happy to take criticism on board if it can help me improve in the future, and review writing is something I quite enjoy (if I can find the time to do a good job on them.)

Anyway, these are planned-expect them in the next few weeks, probably in this order:

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS) ~ Wed 25th August

Sakura Wars: So Long My Love (Wii) ~ Wed/Thurs 1st or 2nd September

Demon's Souls (PS3) ~ ???

Ys Seven (PSP) ~ possibly, when I finish it. I am aiming to finish the game this week.

If by some miracle I get through them, I might do some more, I'm sure there are games I finished and had wanted to review but never got around to it. I can't exactly remember what ones though..

RPG heavy...thats all I play apparantely XD

Now Playing - "The end of all things begins!"

2010-08-22T23:55:00.001+01:00

I finished off a couple games this week and played little bits here and there of others when I wasn't watching football or TV. I haven't put much time into the games I am currently playing, so I've just got early impressions on them so far. Other than that, I'm a bit worried about my laptop-its been locking up and displaying an error message on startup occasionally. I don't know what it was going on about though...might take it to the computer shop if my friends in computing don't know what is up with it. I don't have a huge amount of stuff saved on it, but I'd rather not do a system restore..I don't like the idea of having to start from scratch. Plus last time we did system restore, it was on my ex-girlfriend's computer and that didn't help much, in fact it caused more problems in places. Damn computers...why do they randomly stop working at times...

Anyway, I'm running out of time just now, so I'll turn my attention to the games I've been playing this week. I'm going out to my friend's place today (in fact I was supposed to be there already.)

I finished up Demon's Souls (PS3) eventually, I was having problems with the False King battle-some of his attacks are really damn strong, plus I hate that he can drain your soul levels. He did that a few times and knocked one of my Spell memory slots off, taking with it Soul Ray, a pretty good spell I wanted to use in the final battle. Speaking of which, the final battle is a joke, I don't see how it can get anywhere near even attacking you if you have spells. For a mage, it seems very easy. But that doesn't bug me really, to make up for it there was a hard fight at the end of 1-4, the one I was talking about previously. Its a very hard game in places, so I can see why people might be put off initially. You really need to be patient with it to get through some of the stages. But once you get used to your character and understand the attack patterns the enemies have, where they spawn, the traps and all the other stuff, it is manageable. And it is very rewarding when you get through the bit you were having problems with.

Such an atmospheric game as well, it has quite a dark feel to the world and it is pretty disturbing and creepy in places, which I really appreciate. It breathes life into an RPG which is a bit light on the story.

One other potential flaw I could say it has would be the camera and controls. They can be unwieldy at times and contributed to my death on more than one occasion. Its damn frustrating to get a boss nearly dead, then get backed up against a wall, roll away to dodge and have the camera spinning out of control so you end up walking or rolling into the bosses attack. The lock on feature, while it is pretty much essential for some forms of attack (spells, for example), can also lead to some camera annoyances.

It has some pretty nice music as well, it's never really too jarring and it seems to fit the scenes it is assigned to, even if it is over the top at times. I think it adds to the tense nature of some of the battles, some of which really get you on edge. They leave you shaking from the adrenaline rush. Well, they did for me, I can't take stress very well, but I liked the rush it gave me. Here's one of the songs from 5-3.

Other than the few minor flaws it might have, this is a brilliant game, probably one of the best action RPGs I've played, definitely up there among my favourites from this year. (We just got the EU release a month or two ago T_T)

I finished up Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS) as well, at least the main story. There is a lot more to do for me, but I've been a bit frustrated postgame, as I don't know what quests to do first, or where to go for the easiest grottoes. I got wiped out by a single normal enemy at one point. So after that, its been neglected a bit. I might go back to this some day and try and fill out the bestiary, do more quests etc. I really enjoyed the game though, it has some very nice graphics and a fairly good story. It is a bit fragmented, and slows down in the middle, where you have to go around doing mini-vignette type stories which involve a lot of talking, a dungeon and a boss at the very least. Some of them I found enjoyable, whereas others (like the Swinedimples Academy one) weren't quite up to scratch.

As a Dragon Quest game, I can't really tell how it compares to some of the others, its slightly different from say IV and V, but has the same sense of humour and quirkyness, the same life they have tried to inject it with by giving certain townspeople accents to try and differentiate them. One thing I liked about it was the vocations, similar to FFIII or other RPGs with class systems, you can chop and change the classes of your characters when you wish. (Not at any time, you have to go back to a certain area to do so.) That adds a lot of replayability and will make different people's playthroughs go differently depending on what they choose. I like that in RPGs-there should always be some scope to do things differently in my opinion. FFXIII was a recent offender in that area. It puts you into a tunnel for 20 or 30 hours so there really is no chance to do things differently until you get to Pulse later in the game. RPGs should have lots of things to do, they shouldn't be as streamlined as that I reckon. It was a bit of a step back for the series and I seriously hope they change things back for their next games.

I had my eye on Eternal Poison (PS2) ever since it was announced for US release, and sadly it never found its way over to Europe or other PAL regions. I'm a big fan of tactical RPGs and this one had a really nice dark tone and style to it from what I had seen. So now that I can play NTSC games on the PS2, I picked this one up. I've not put in much time so far, but I am appreciating some of the character designs (the artbook it came with is fantastic, by the way) and the story seems interesting so far. Its kinda strange that it is going to be a large dungeon with many floors though, that is more of a dungeon-crawler RPG convention. And apparantely grinding is not possible in this game! ;_; Oh well, I can enjoy other aspects, like collecting all the Majin I can, for one thing. I'll have to play more of this in order to recommend it or otherwise.

Ys Seven (PSP) This game arrived only a few days after the US release! I had been waiting on this game being released for a while now, definitely interested in it all the way, despite never having played an Ys game, so I've put a couple hours in so far and I have been fairly impressed by the battle system which is nice and fast paced and doesn't have that disconnect of the enemies appearing on the world map, or random encounters and then the transition into battle, it is all seamless. You hack away at the enemies as they appear and they shower money and items on their deaths. It is very kind of actiony...like a zelda game or something similar.

As my first experience of an Ys game, I am fairly happy so far. There are some things that seem odd, like the super silent protagonist, Adol. Its like they go out of their way to make him say nothing, for example, a message will come up saying "Adol thanks the King" or whatever. They could have done the same with less lines of dialogue by making him just say "Thanks" or something similar. The inventory screen will take some getting used to for me, but so far I'm not even far enough in to have many items heheh.. XD

Its got really cool music and some quite nice character designs, as with many Falcom games. Here is the opening to the game.

I played a little bit more of Diablo II (PC), continuing my Elemental druid playthrough I started a couple months ago. I was determined to get through Act I, as I think it is the most boring of the five for me, as I've seen it so many times. That's due to me having played so many different characters so many times in this game though. I put in a few more hours of this, and got past Andariel (the final Act I boss) really easily. Seriously, she fell faster than any other character I've used from what I can remember. Some of the Druid's Fire spells are pretty powerful from the looks of it. Don't think I've died once so far. I put this back on hold though, in an effort to finish off Demon's Souls and DQIX. While waiting for Ys and Eternal Poison to arrive, I put in a few more games of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3) multiplayer. The cover system still isn't perfect, but I'm surprised by how good the multiplayer for this is. It does have flaws though, it seems if there aren't people online for an optimal game, it will throw you in with whoever is on, even if means guys at the max level. It does try to balance the teams out though. I suck at this, but I'm up to lv22 online now. It was pretty satisfying to bring a game or two back for our team, coming back from behind to win. I seem to start really poorly, but improve as each game goes on.

I couldn't find many decent pictures for this post T_T Maybe next time...

Gaems..dunno what to play =/

2010-08-21T00:37:00.006+01:00

Ok, so I finished up Dragon Quest IX and Demon's Souls and now I don't know exactly what to play next. Ys Seven and Eternal Poison will be here soon, so I've left out the psp from this random selection in an effort to decide what to play next. I've taken 3 Fortune Cookie Picks from Backloggery, from the following unfinished games on these consoles: PS3, PS2, PS1, DS, GBA, PC. Basically what it does is take a random game and suggest it to you, apparantely it is always right. ¬_¬

#1 Yggdra Union: We'll Never Fight Alone (GBA) ~ Hmm, I've tried the start of this game and liked Riviera, which was the first game in the Dept. Heaven series. Might give this a shot, as many people go on about how good this is. Its a tactical RPG with quite a unique flavour to it, as with many Sting games.

#2 Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard (DS) ~ I can't play this yet, not finished the first game and probably will not for a while. Its a hardcore dungeon crawler, with a really cool old school feel in places. Some people say it was a step back from the first, others say it improved upon things slightly. I'm enjoying the first game, getting through it slowly. I'm a bit worried about the fact that your quest log can only have a maximum amount of ongoing quests in this one though. I don't want to have to play with a walkthrough so I don't screw myself over. I'm not using one for the first game and I'm doing ok. Its rewarding when you progress down a floor or level up enough to take on the enemies or FOEs, but I can tell the first stratum boss is gonna kick seven shades of shit outta me.. -_-

#3 Vagrant Story (PS1) ~ Another highly regarded game which I've not finished. I tried to play this a few months ago when I joined up with the RPG-a-thon on backlog but got frustrated with it and quit. Some of the things about it haven't aged well and pissed me off (camera for one). I ended up getting disorientated and lost. I really should put some more time into this and see where the story goes. Its supposed to be a very good action RPG from the ps1 era. I played it for around 2 or 3 hours last time I played, and I think I was nearly used to the gameplay mechanics. There was one I can vaguely remember that pissed me off slightly, and it was something to do with accuracy in combat, the Risk element...I think. It just seemed unessecary (I can't spell..)

So which one am I gonna play outta these? I'm not too sure. Think I'll put Vagrant Story in for another blast. The story is supposed to be really good. If it annoys me I'll play some Uncharted 2 multiplayer or do some DQIX postgame. I'll probably end up playing Ys Seven when it arrives though.

Games on my Radar #6

2010-08-17T12:25:00.005+01:00

I've got a couple games with relatively stupid names I'm going to talk about today. Lets hope the games are better than the names. Rhyming...

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (PC/PS3/360)

I've not seen an awful lot on this game yet, there is only one trailer out and a few pieces of art from what I can tell. It will either be brilliant or really dissapointing. I mean, they've got such good pedigree on the team (is that the right word?) - R.A. Salvatore is designing the world, Todd McFarlane is designing the characters and controlling art direction and they've got Ken Rolston from the Elder Scrolls III and IV overseeing stuff. They have promised a high fantasy western action rpg and I hope they deliver. I have to say, I'm not a big fan of Todd McFarlane's western comic stuff like Spawn and I hope that his stuff doesn't ruin the game, or indeed that any of the other people on board do. If it all comes together, this one could be good. I don't think it will be out for ages, but I'm liking the fact that we are getting more western RPGs. I really enjoyed Dragon Age, at times it was a bit bland, but I had a lot of fun with it. If this is anywhere near it's level, I'll be happy. I'm looking forward to this one, but I'm slightly sceptical as well.

Links: Official Site / Games Radar /

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (PSP) Lettuce.. wha? o.o Stupid name...

I've never actually played any of these Tactics Ogre games, but I've heard a lot of good things from people on podcasts, youtube videos and various sites. So this one is a remake of the SNES game and it is being handled by the same team that did the Final Fantasy Tactics 'remake' for the PSP, which was really good I thought. I didn't get bugged by the lagging animations or other technical flaws in that game. Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to this one most out of these three games. I love strategy RPGs and this series is one I've not had the chance to try yet. I'm hoping for a deep, customisable game with a good story. From what I've heard, I'll get it from this game. I'll need to look into this series more as the release date draws nearer.

Links: 1UP / RPGamer / IGN / Siliconera / RPGFan / RPGamer

Hunted: The Demon's Forge (PC/PS3/360)

From the developers of The Bard's Tale and published by Bethesda, this will be a 3rd person action RPG with co-op multiplayer. I don't know very much about The Bard's Tale, but I think it had its fans. Regardless, I like the look of this trailer. I do like multiplayer in RPGs, if it is done well. Borderlands for example, looked like it did it fairly seamlessly. I mean, it had its flaws, glitches everywhere for example, and it might not even be much of an RPG depending on your opinion, but hopefully this Hunted game can have something in the same vein.

Football season starts up!

2010-08-15T23:15:00.004+01:00

So its the first weekend of the new football season and I'm satisfied so far. No particularly brilliant games in the SPL or the Barclays Premier League, but my team won their game.

I was most impressed with Blackpool in the Premier League. They were favourites to get relegated from the premiership last year and they got promoted to the top division and won their opening game 4-0. So I thought that was a good opening day result for them, but then again, the Premier League is one of the top football leagues in the world. Burnley had a good start to their season last year and got relegated after a drop in standards.

Match of the Day 2 is back, but without Adrian Chiles..who did they get to replace him? Colin Murray from Channel 5 or Itv4 or whatever crappy channel he had been on before. I don't have anything against him, just don't like the coverage the channels he has been on has been like... (that makes little to no sense)

And seriously guys, what...is..with the new MotD2 opening? And where did 2 good 2 bad go? That was awesome! =( Its still not very serious the programme, but something about it doesnt seem as good..they are a bit more obssessed over games from the past, clear from the opening and one or two of the videos they showed.

I looked for a video of the new opening, but its a combination of the show only having been on today and a lack of people uploading the openings I think. No luck. Probably a good thing. So heres a video of a 2 good 2 bad from MotD2, damn you bbc/Colin Murray... *shakes fist*

Now Playing - "The Almighty is coming in my ear"

2010-08-15T12:43:00.007+01:00

Hahaha, whenever I'm playing a Dragon Quest game I find it really easy to get quotes for this column's titles. Such awesomely scripted games.

Well, that gives you an idea of what I've been playing this past week. If you've been frequenting any RPG related sites recently, most people are playing Dragon Quest IX, or at least they were. I'm still playing through it though, as I had to wait till a bit after the EU release to get it.

Dragon Quest IX (DS) - I think I'm fairly far through this now but I'm not too sure. I've put over 40 hours in so far and I'm still enjoying it. I'm trying to fill the Monster Compendium to 100% as I go along, and doing as much collecting of items, alchemy and quests as I can, so its taking time to get through the story. I will probably try and go for 100% completion at some point though, depending on how long that will take and if I can do it without DQVC and multiplayer assistance. I have been going on the VC to 'download' quests and buy items, its pretty cool for getting rare stuff but I usually find my money dissapearing quickly... hehe

Anyway, if you are still on the fence about this game, lemme give you some info. Graphically, it has not dissapointed me in the slightest. Some people don't like DS 3D polygonal graphics, but this looks a lot better than say, FFIII DS for example. It has a kinda cel-shaded look slightly. Most things are outlined in black and have quite nice colours, its not muddy looking at all. The style reminds me of DQVIII actually. Which makes sense as Level 5 were on board for this one as well. I really like some of the aspects, for example how every piece of gear shows up on your character models.

Content wise, man there is absolutely tonnes. If you want to do everything possible, I'm just guessing but I reckon it would take a good 60-100hrs, probably more for all the grinding of vocations and skills. I think I talked about this last time, but it is really well set out, you have the Battle Record which tells you of your percentage completion of each thing as you go along. There are Quests, around 184 or so including the ones from the DQVC which you need to connect to the net to get. The stuff is actually on the cart already, it just needs to be unlocked when they decide to give it to us. They are getting through them quickly though, which is good I guess. Some of the quests are your basic fetch quests, but some are actually kind of tough, like the ones to unlock the advanced vocations. For example, one of them wants you to set up a Wizard Ward spell and then kill 2 Metal Slimes with the caster of the Ward. Metal Slimes are fairly hard to kill as they are rare in the first dungeon you find them in, and then they thend to like to Flee from battle. That quest took a while, but there are even harder ones than that. It'll definitely keep me occupied for a while, this game.

The story is dragging a bit in the middle, but for the most part I've enjoyed it. I'm at a point where you have to basically go around the world collecting the Fyggs from the Yggdrasil Tree or whatever. So its a bit disjointed, but the little vignettes do interest me, they are pretty melancholy and dark at times. People die, and there is nothing you can do about it. People learn from their mistakes and supposedly become better people from their trials etc. I was really impressed with the opening of the game though, but they stripped us of our power and made us go on a journey in typical DQ style in which the character supposedly learns and discovers themselves.

Demon's Souls (PS3) - Other than DQIX, I've been putting a lot of time into this, mostly grinding and working on getting good gear and slowly progressing with the 'storyline.' I guess critics of the game might say it doesnt have much of a storyline, but to be honest..I don't mind that much. I'm usually all about story in RPGs, but dungeon crawlers can get away without if they have good gameplay or atmosphere, both of which this has checked.

Its so tense in places, I actually found myself shaking slightly and getting a real rush out of it. Tower of Latria scared the crap outta me the first time round. After I grinded up in 4-2 and came back to it, I could more or less oneshot everything so I had less to worry about, but still got creeped out by some of the stuff. Shrine of Storms, as well. I really liked those stages. 4-2... I actually found really hard with those beam shooting respawning guys who are basically invisible. Took me ages to get through that one even after grinding to SL65 or 70. I was really liking the atmosphere of those stages, the 3rd one with the Archdemon was damn cool. Slicing through the heavens with that sword kicked ass... *makes slashing motion and noise*

I've kind of got Demon's Souls on hold for a while now. I've only got a few of the stages left before the end game, plus my brother has the disc at the moment. To be honest, I'm kind of procrastinating..I just don't want to go through that horrible swamp in the Valley of Defilement... *shudders* Its so dark and nasty and those big Depraved Goblin dudes scare the shit out've me... T_T

I want to get all of the spells for my character, but that will take at least another 1 or 2 playthroughs to get the needed Demons souls and give them to Yuria or Freke. If I do decide to try and plat this, it will take a couple playthroughs, but I think that is normal for most people...dont think its possible to get it all on one go.

So apart from those games, I've not been playing much else this week. Depending on when Eternal Poison arrives, I'll start that up. Kindof dark toned Strategy RPG, so basically two things I love.

Hmm, or if not, I'll try another PS2 game, possibly Ico or Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. Anyway, those are for another time. I've rambled enough. Eternal Poison still ain't here... T_T I ordered Ys 7 for the psp the other night, so once it releases tomorrow (I think) it'll ship, well..I hope. But I imagine it'll have to ship to the UK seller first and then on to me. Might take a while...

My top RPG time-stealers

2010-08-10T23:53:00.002+01:00

Thought I'd do a post on some of the games that have stolen the most of my time over the years. I got the idea from some guy's list on backloggery after browsing through people's pages. Here's mine. I like RPGs and games to give me a lot of content and a lot of replayability. These days I don't replay games as much as I used to, but I still occasionally go back to older games I like, or ones I have lots to do in and just try and have some fun with them. Hopefully this list can give you guys some ideas of games that will give you lots to do.

I like the idea of doing lists, but I am a really indecisive guy, so this seems like a good starting point as there is little actual deciding on this top 5. The only rule I'll make for this is that there will be a max of 1 game per series. Otherwise this list would be seriously Pokemon-flavoured...plus that way I can get an actual numbered countdown. I'll still talk about some of the other ones in the series that I played to death. Its kinda not a Top 5 per se, but whatever. I'll talk a bit about each one and some of the others in each series. Hopefully you will enjoy hearing about my obsessive gaming habits of the past...I swear...some of these games were so awesome.

I'll list the platform the game is (and where applicable, the one I played on) and my play time in brackets... *eesh* here goes..

1. Pokemon Emerald (GBA) (559 hrs 28) Man....this gaem stole so much of my time. First of all, I tried to get the entire dex filled in, and I got pretty far actually, surprisingly so for not having many other people to trade with. (I had a handful, but the biggest help was from having 2 GBAs and multiple games to get pokes from). My current dex completion is 381/386. I say current, but its not like I still play this game any more. It was at this point that I was starting to get into the 'competitive' game. You'll know what I mean if you've ever dabbled in that scene. Its all about breeding and training up the pokemon so that their stats mean that they can outrun and outpunch other ones that don't necessarily have as high IVs (Individual values that vary from pokemon to pokemon, but can be passed on by breeding) It is very time consuming, but once you get a decent egg pokemon (having rare candied it to lv100 to check IVs, and reset) you can begin the EV training. Yet more time-sinking. And after that comes the grinding to lv100. Another brilliant thing about this game was the cloning glitch, which was invaluable to my completing the dex in Diamond. Cloning items and legendaries and pal-parking em over really helped me get stuff to trade over wi-fi. We had a lot of fun with these games, me and my friends..but now I've kinda become a bit burnt out on pokemon games, having played them fairly religiously up to Platinum. Other games in the series I played look like this in terms of hours: Pokemon Diamond (390 hrs 06)-But I finished the pokedex completely =D, Pokemon Leaf Green (382 hrs) and Pokemon Silver (328 hrs 19). My favourite pokemon game is probably a tossup between Silver and Emerald.

Edit 11/8/10: So I did go along to that tournament I was talking about earlier. I ended up winning, in fact not losing a single game. I felt quite bad though, it was a lot of kids, not all of whom had lv100s. Prize was a set of sealed Pokemon The First Movie and Pikachu's Vacation comics signed by the Brock and Meowth voice actors from back inthe original series. Man, those comics took me back. I went to see the first movie in the cinema if I remember rightly... XD

2. Dissidia: Final Fantasy (PSP) (151 hrs 43) Technically not #2, but I don't wanna talk about Pokemon too much in this list...*shudders* Similar to FFXIII, I am strangely compelled by this game despite it's flaws and the fact I despise it at times. I was really looking forward to this before it launched. Like, seriously looking forward to it. So when it arrived, I was seriously addicted for a good while until I finished it. I still haven't got good at the game, I'm sucky at the timing of blocking, dodging and attacking. There is so much depth to this game, but I am still really dissapointed with it. For a game I claim to hate at times, I sure have played it a lot. Theres so much, perhaps too much to do for completionists...I guess I got my money's worth though. My file looks like this currently: Accomplishments 72%, Catalogue 97%, Battlegen 79%, Shop 82%. Lv100s: 5. Who knows, I might go back some time and try and get decent at the actual battling side, or try and finish off the accomplishments and shop (the 2 hardest things from what I remember.)

3. Final Fantasy XIII (PS3) (134 hrs+)..I really don't know why, or how I've played this so much. Its nowhere near my top 3 of the FF series, but I think its because I knew I could get everything I needed for 100% completion in 1 playthrough, and the goals were relatively simple for the most part, I kept grinding and pressing on with the hunt sidequests to the stage I am at now; I've done all the missions and just need 2 or 3 more trophies (treasure hunter, the 5* mission one, dunno what else) before I am done. Plus it looks absolutely amazing, apart from that though, there are way too many flaws with this game: for me, it is too linear, has boring characters and confusing, convoluted (and downright stupid in places) story and many other little things I don't like. Once I eventually get enough Trapezehedrons I will be really satisfied. Why? Because that'll mean I don't need to play this game anymore... Others in the series I've played to death: Final Fantasy VIII (120 hrs +) I played this back when it came out a fair few times, but never did finish it. Somehow my most recent file took me 100 hrs or so (although that included 2 nights of me falling asleep hehee...) It may get a lot of hate, but I like a lot about it. It has the nostalgia factor for me, since it was one of the first FFs I played. I know VIII has it's flaws, but I still like it. Gotta love Triple Triad!

I've actually picked up my save on FFXIII in an effort to finish it off completely. I just need the Treasure Hunter trophy and then I'm done, but I gotta do a lot of Gil farming and get a few catalysts like Dark Matters to get there. I do like some things about it, but its far from my favourite in the series. Too many flaws and a tedious postgame at times.

4. Dragon Warrior Monsters 2: Tara's Adventure (GBC) (127 hrs 51) If you like Pokemon and Dragon Quest (especially the DQM: Joker games), this one is still viable-it has aged quite well actually. I put a lot of time into it a couple years ago trying to breed and grind up a strong team. Its basically got a fusion monster mechanic at it's core, (kinda like SMT and Pokemon in a way) where you can combine any 2 monsters together to get a new one with the moves and stats passed on (to an extent) to the new monster. Its got a lot of depth-if you want to get the boss family monsters as well as all the other ones, expect to put in at least what I have-probably a lot more time. Definitely a good game. I have the 2 first Dragon Warrior Monsters games, and I've still not finished DQM1 yet, but want to some time. Really cool game, check this one out if you see it cheap.

5. Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (PSP) (104 hrs+) Another game I absolutely love. I'm a big fan of tactical RPGs and this series is about as deep as it gets. You can for one thing, get all the way up to lv9999. There are many classes to unlock, items to find (just completing the item list is a massive challenge in itself), Dark Assembly stuff to do. Tonnes more that I've not touched on. A youtube user I follow was working through this game and put over 600 hours in and still had a lot to do. The psp port of the first game also has multiplayer and Etna story mode added, as if you needed more content. Etna mode has even more of the quirky, over the top humour that the series has as it's style. I reckon this is the strongest in the series, things started to go downhill since then. Although I still need to play the 3rd, so I can't really say that for sure. If you are a completionist, man..this game could kill you. But it will be an awesome, Prinny-filled death. I'll definitely go back to this game some time and play more of it. I like it a lot.

Honorable Mentions: Diablo II (PC) I love this game. I've played through the story at least 4 or 5 times over the years since it was released (I got it right around the time of release) and have many good memories of it. I don't think it has suffered over the last few years-it has aged pretty well. It has been such an influential game in defining and dominating the hack and slash type WRPGs, often with a focus on loot or dungeon crawling. Dungeon Siege, Torchlight, many others would not have existed had it not been for this and Diablo coming out. Its a must play. Another one I'll mention quickly is Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions (PSP). This one is a remake of the PS1 game Final Fantasy Tactics, and has a fair amount to do. Sidequests, unlocking job classes, tonnes of items, Treasure Hunter items hidden around the stages and a few additions from the original, as well as a nice new translation. Only drawback in this one is some of the lag you will see in battle.

I recommend: Thought I'd chuck another few games in there to make this more interesting. I'm picking these based on the amount of replayability and content they have. So if for some reason you have read through this and are inspired to go pick up a lengthy, content filled RPG, or you want value for money, you should check these RPGs out: Chrono Trigger (DS) with its 13 or so endings, Bestiary, Item compendium and much more, it has a lot to do and is often described as one of the best games of all time. Check this one out if you didnt see the other versions, this has been described as the definitive version, and it will keep you occupied for a while if you are a completionist. It has a really decent New Game+ system so you can just run through time after time to pick up different endings. I really want to go back to my file at some point soon and try and complete it more. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (PC/Xbox)-strangely enough I'm recommending this one over Oblivion, based on my opinion of the two so far. I felt Oblivion wasn't quite as interesting in places. I'm still yet to finish Oblivion or quite get into it as much as I did with Morrowind. But either of those games have massive amounts to do, especially if you dabble with the modding aspect of the PC versions. Fallout 3 (360/PS3/PC) might actually be more people's cup of tea though, it has a more interesting world (though not to everyone's taste) than Oblivion and arguably Morrowind. All 3: Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3 have their share of flaws but equally all 3 have some brilliant aspects. Pick up the Game of the Year editions for maximum content. I could easily recommend more games in here but this article has gone on much longer than I planned already.

Hope you liked it, or found it entertaining at least. Its pretty clear that a) Pokemon is crack in video form for me, b) I should definitely steer clear of MMORPGs... and c) I don't have much motivation any more to play a single game for huge periods of time. Anyway, if you haven't checked out some of those games, have a look into them. I recommend the majority of them.

Planet Hell

Its ALIVE!!!

Gods Eater Burst

Happy Halloween!

Extra Life 2011!

Gamescom news!

Xenoblade Chronicles

Live Cookie munching (Cookie picks #2)

Cookie picks

Gloria Union (PSP)

Vanillaware E3 2011

I am dissapoint.

Exercise overload...

Some games that look rather awesome :D

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My computer is no longer blow'd up...

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Today...*sigh*

Way too much stuff to do....

Time eater..

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Cali Otaku semester 2

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1UP's worst videogame boxart from 2010

Anime shiz ~ Semester 2

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Cladun 2 (Classic Dungeon X2)

New ideas for features.

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Disgaea 4~more info

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Valkyria Chronicles artbook

2010's gaming progress

Computer problems...

Now Playing - "Sticky White Stuff"

Guile's Theme...

DQVI announcement!

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Rehaul of the blog

Now Playing - "And now this cat is going to barf on me."

Goddamn, its freezing...

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POKAYMON!

Gorubi, Gorubi!

4chan spawns a new meme babby

Now Playing - “It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.”

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What games to buy next?

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Red Wii...

Some awesome news.

Stupid temperature...

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Some new trailers

This never fails to make me laugh

Sunflower Seeds - Tate Modern - 12 October 2010 to 2 May 2011

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Aneemayz

Some PAL game release updates.

Now Playing - "Reload this!"

New Xbox! =D

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Anime Impressions - High School of the Dead

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love Review

Now Playing - "Its time to churn!"

Pain...

Woohoo!

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies Review

Upcoming Review Schedule.

Now Playing - "The end of all things begins!"

Gaems..dunno what to play =/

Games on my Radar #6

Today...sigh