2013 Round Up - Games of the year

So this will be the first of two posts for the end of 2013. Scary thought to think we are already at the end of the year, to me it seems like it's flown by. So I thought I'd try and wrap up the year with two posts - one which a lot of websites will be doing at the moment, their game of the year posts or videos, usually published in early January. And another post which is fitting for this transition time in the gaming 'generation', a games of the generation post, having a look at my favourite, i.e. my personal choices for the best games of the past generation (NDS, PSP, Wii, X360, PS3.)

First of all, my games of the year, and this should be a bit different to a lot of the other sites and blogs. This is mainly down to the fact that I've not had much time to play games this year, with a lot of work and crazy stuff going on in life. Its been mostly handheld games I've been playing as they are a bit more flexible and I can put little bits of time in here and there, especially when travelling on the train and things.

So my list of games that I finished are noted below as B status, and C status means 100% finished. These are from the backloggery, just pasted from my notes on there. I like to use that website to keep track of my collection and my progress in games. Quite useful if you take a long break from a game and you want to know where you left off as well. Anyway, as you can see, my selection is limited to only those games in bold, which were released in 2013, and that I finished. I don't see games that I played partially as eligible to receive any rewards or be reviewed in any informed way whatsoever. I'm also starting a new rule that I've tried to stay away from in the past on the blog. I'm going to be adding more detailed labels, with series that I mentioned in the posts, and perhaps game titles. This should hopefully make searching more easy looking through my labels for posts.

2013 Stats

Inazuma Eleven (DS)
Fire Emblem (GBA)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Steam)
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS)
Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate (3DS)
Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)
Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection (PSP)
Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS)
Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (DS)
Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (DS)
Project X Zone (3DS)
Pokemon X (3DS)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked (3DS)

So out of those games that I managed to finish, I'd narrow my favourites down to Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, which I put a huge amount of time into, Pokemon X, which surpassed my expectations in a big way after the dissapointing last generation, and Fire Emblem: Awakening, which was a brilliantly polished game..although one that I've not really put much time into post game. I'll go into some more detail about the three of these games and why I think they are so well made (in their own ways)

So looking at last year's round up 3 of the games I had said I was looking forward to in 2013 actually ended up being my favourite games from 2013. Maybe I need to play more games or something...

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate 

Some people will say that the Wii U version is better because of the online multiplayer. It makes it a lot easier to get far into the G-Rank content (i.e. postgame/multiplayer stuff) but the vast majority can be done solo. It is a lot more fun to play some of the quests with friends you know in person, but I've put in over 230 hours more or less solo (just done a couple quests a long time ago near the launch of the game with a friend) and it's been really fun so far.

What I like about the setup Capcom have created for MH3U is that it's so flexible. You can play multiplayer locally with friends on a Wii U and up to 3 3DS systems (I may be wrong on that, I've not had a chance to test that out yet.) and you can move save games between 3DS and Wii U versions of the game if you want. If I eventually end up getting a Wii U I'll probably put down the money for the other version of this game and play some online coop with some other friends I've just not had a chance to see in person.

There is a huge amount of content in this game, with hundreds of items to craft and quests to work through. The only thing that puts a lot of people off is the controls. Especially when it comes to the underwater levels, they can be really fiddly to keep everything 'controlled' for lack of a better word. For this, the Circle Pad Pro or XL version is a must. They are fairly inexpensive online, but I found them really hard to find in shops (at least where I live in Scotland.)

Pokemon X

Pokemon X to me felt like a very big leap from the previous games, both graphically and in a lot of other areas. It is probably as close to the 'Pokemon MMO' that everyone wants Game Freak to come out with for the next Pokemon handheld step. The online integration is really seamless and reminds me of Demon's Souls where you can see other players who are passing by the area, you can see a list of acquaintances where you've had some interaction with (trade, battle etc) and a list of friends (people who are simply on your 3DS list.) You can interact easily with all of the people on those lists, and have mesages that pop up to talk with other players. There is a lot to the multiplayer aspects, and they've really made it so seamless to trade and battle other players. You don't have to add submarine codes for each other (well, you kind of do, but the 3DS codes are a bit easier now) or plug in awkward link cables and then make your way to a poke centre like you had to previously, you can go into multiplayer from more or less any area, in town, dungeon etc.

They've added quite a bit more depth to the gameplay with the addition of mega evolutions and the Fairy type. The last time a type was introduced was back in back in the 3rd generation with the Steel type, and in a way it comes as a breath of fresh air. Fairy types are unaffected by Dragon type moves and super effective against Dragon, so some people believe they could really change the Dragon heavy metagame. I played a lot of Pokemon X in 2013 in the first few weeks after it's October release date. About 120 hours roughly, finishing the storyline, doing some pokedex collecting, breeding and trading for competitive battles. I've got a lot more to do though, I think I left some legendaries and post game stuff as my team wasn't high enough level to safely take them on. Pokemon games are always solid choices for your Nintendo handhelds, and X and Y really give you a lot for your money. They have a lot of throwbacks to older games in the series, even back to Generation 1, and a lot of decent quality for newer players to ease into the series.

Fire Emblem: Awakening 

I put in about 70 hours to this game, and ended up finishing the main story and a lot of the side quest material, paralogues and DLC quests in about 35 hours (the rest was attempts, characters dying and reloading.) I chose to play on the 'classic' Fire Emblem mode, with Normal difficulty and this made permadeath something to consider. I don't really think you can play Fire Emblem without permadeath (where your characters die for good if they fall in battle) but it is a really good feature in this game, and one that hopefully appealed to a lot of newcomers to the series. This is such a brilliant srpg series that really needs more attention. It has a really simple gameplay mechanic at its core and really isn't too difficult or complex. Its a very good entry in the series and think that people should give it a shot if they still haven't done so. It has some niggling annoyances, and for some reason I've not gone back to it in a long time, but I hope to one day. Even though I did a playthrough on Normal, Classic, there are harder difficulties and a lot of content due to the dialogues you can get between your characters. So theres a lot for me to go back to, and its just a really well polished game, and that is why it deserves a spot on my games of the year list. Which it turns out, are all 3DS games.

Recent Purchases #7 ~ DS collecting

Ok, so I've been pretty busy this summer, a lot of stuff has been happening; issues with university such as exams and dissertation topic for next year, finding a flat for next academic year and leaving the flat I was in, arranging two work placements with optician multiples (Boots Opticians and Specsavers), fitting in a summer holiday to Chamonix in the French Alps and then a few days in Brugge in Belgium and unfortunately having some relatives and family relatives passing away, so quite a hectic rollercoaster of a summer so far, and we're approaching winter pretty quickly it looks like...

I've not really done one of these posts since back in February 2013, I believe...I was planning on doing a post where I kind of went in to more detail about what I've been up to this summer, and I think I may do that, but I found that I had this post as a draft from a while back and thought I'd finish it off. That was quite a slippery slope however, as I looked through my backlog I uncovered more and more games that I'd bought since I last posted... So lets get into the games I picked up, and wherever I can, I'll talk about my history with the series, and thoughts on each games.

Ok, so first of all, forgive the grainy, blurry pictures, it is my Blackberry tablet that I took them on, and its kinda terribad for quality.. Then again, I couldn't be bothered digging out a camera or a phone with a decent quality camera.
So I named this post DS Collecting when I originally wrote it, this is because I've been picking up a lot of DS games as they appear to drop in price as more stores pick up 3DS titles. There are a lot of DS games that I either played briefly when they came out and never picked up or finished, or series that people were really enjoying and I just didn't get a chance to check them out. So a lot of these DS games are ones that I'd heard good things about or were really good deals. There are a lot more that I'm wanting to pick up when I can, some of which are included on my Backloggery wishlist.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike (DS) 07/15/13, £4 preowned, Game-Fort Kinnaird, Edinburgh
Advance Wars: Dark Conflict (DS) 06/04/13, £3 preowned, CEX-Edinburgh 

These two games I picked up for less than £5 each. Dark Conflict was 2nd hand in CEX as I had really been enjoying the Fire Emblem games on the GBA and wanted to check this series out. Its a series my brother had checked out way back and been trying to get me to play. I never did, so finally decided to start with the DS games. Ideally I wanted to pick up the GBA games, but I couldn't seem to find a good auction or buy it now deal on ebay for either of the games. So I'm very interested in getting into these games, and hopefully the storylines aren't too obnoxious...on a recent episode of RPGcast I wasn't hearing the best feedback on these DS titles..

Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS) 05/08/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Inverness
Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (DS) 05/13/13, £5.98 preowned, ebay.co.uk
Professor Layton and the Lost Future (DS) 05/08/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Inverness

The Layton series is one that experienced great popularity back when they came out, at least in Europe. I played little bits here and there, helping people out with the puzzles as they played through them but as they were so popular, they held their value for a long time and I never picked the games up myself. I was up in Inverness visiting some family and saw Curious Village and Lost Future in a two for £20 deal, so I picked these up on a bit of a whim. I began playing the first game and managed to finish the story off within a day or two, and only a few play sessions, enjoying it quite a bit. This one had good pacing and puzzles. It was quite a breath of fresh air compared to long RPGs that I am normally playing, and after a while I went back to the second game, Pandora's Box and played through the story of this one. This took a bit longer to get through than the first one, and I felt although towards the end the story took quite an interesting turn, it just didn't hold up compared to the first game. It dragged in places and the story just was not as well designed. Although there was less backtracking and the puzzles were integrated into the story situations, it felt like a case of one step forward, two steps backward. Still a very good series however, and I'm looking forward to jumping into what I've heard is the best of this original trilogy, the Lost Future. After the at times mediocre Pandora's Box though, I'm taking some time to play some other styles of games.

Project X Zone (3DS) 07/15/13, £22.00 new, Amazon

Back when this game was being talked about on podcasts and forums, most people were under the impression that it would never come out in english. It came as a big shock to me and a lot of people when it was announced for localisation. I still don't understand how it could have been possible with all the characters from different series (some of which never even came out in Europe, Super Robot Taisen OG for one) owned by different companies. It must have been a difficult game to actually make money. People unfamiliar with RPGs or these various characters will just see this game and get kind of confused I'd imagine. Anyway, its a pretty awesomely made game. The character portraits are well drawn, the battles are quite fun at first (they start to get quite long and drawn out...and a tad repetitive later on). The story doesn't make a lot of sense, but there is a lot of fun to be had with this game. Its very long, with 5 prologue chapters and around 40 story chapters (each of which consists of 1 large battle, a fair chunk of dialogue and a sort of small introduction skirmish or battle.) From what I've heard, it clocks in at around 50-80 hrs long. So far, I've just finished chapter 25 I think, so I've still got a fair bit of the game left.
-Edit: Since starting the blog post, I finished this game off in 75 hours. Yep, that was just the story, there are no real side quests to speak of. Its a long, at some times repetitive game, and I would say its at least 20 hours too long.
However, its worth buying this game just to support these kind of stupid (risky, but awesome) business decisions I think. There is a market for these kind of niche games, even though its a small amount of people in the US and Europe that are interested, we need to show companies that it is worth while.

Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS) 04/19/13, £ new, G-Force, Glasgow

Fire Emblem is a series I've only recently got into, after seeing the original (well for me, I think of FE7 (the first GBA game us PAL gamers got) as the original, even though I know the series has a much deeper history. Any way, FE7 blew me away, with its brilliant localisation, intense permadeath difficulty (if you try to do things without losing any characters like I eventually managed) and fairly mature themes of war and politics. So after playing Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken, I heard Awakening would be coming out in Europe and knew I would have to get it. The 3DS was quite light on RPGs, and I'd heard a lot of good talk about this game. So when it was getting close to release, I was surprised that I didn't just simply preorder on Amazon or some website like I normally do. I was really taking a risk in waiting and seeing if retail shops here would have copies of the game, as Fire Emblem games can become very hard to find and increase in value quickly. This was right after one of my final 3rd year exams, and I headed down to the shops to see if I could pick this up right away, and I was starting to sweat as I hoped somewhere would have this game in stock. I had read up on this game, watched a lot of videos from Nintendo and other sources and really hyped myself up for Awakening. Thankfully an independent game shop in Glasgow had this in stock, and I picked it up, eager to get into this game as quickly as I could. When I got around to playing it, it really didn't dissapoint me

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate (3DS) 03/06/13, £29.86 new, shopto.net

This game, I was a little apprehensive to pick up..I've posted impressions of the demo back when it came out. You can read that here if you are interested. I was actually quite happy with how the game turned out, even though it seemed to repeat some of the content in places, from different perspectives of sorts, as you play through this fairly short 2.5D metroidvania platformer/action RPG with 3 different characters. It doesn't quite compare to the fun I had with the GBA and DS 'vania games, but its still a pretty solid title for the 3DS. 

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS) 03/25/13, £31.86 new, Amazon

Oh man, I'm a big fan of the Monster Hunter games...I get way too addicted to them, farming new sets of armour and weapons, slowly progressing through the required quests. Its a simple, lite (or no) story, with really rewarding, satisfying gameplay that they have refined over the last couple of games. I've put a lot of time (over 230 hours) on and off over summer into MH3U, finishing off the village (single player) quests, and working my way to G-rank in the guild (multiplayer/single player) quests on my own (because I only have the 3DS version, and any friends I know with the game are too difficult to pin down to actually want to play the game multiplayer.) The 3DS version doesn't have any online facility to play with people like some of the other 3DS games like the new Mario Kart, but I still believe (for me) that it is the preferred platform. I like being able to take the 3DS on the train if I'm going somewhere (I take a lot of public transport because I can't drive yet) and I like the mobility of the 3DS. If someone is watching something on TV, I can kind of watch both (MH takes a lot of concentration at times though.) I know you can do something similar with the Wii U, but for me, its still not a good time to jump on board with the Wii U. I'm waiting for maybe one or two more games that interest me. So far, there is Monster Hunter 3U, which I would definitely rebuy, Earthbound on the Virtual Console, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD, Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem (its a Wii U game when it eventually releases...right? :s) So its slowly getting there with the games I'm interested to play. I will pick one up fairly soon, I have a few friends who are already way further than me in MH that I could finally play some quests with if I pick a Wii U up.

Infinite Space (DS) 06/03/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Perth
Time and Eternity (PS3) 06/28/13, £40 new, GAME-Perth
Okamiden (DS) 07/15/13, £10 preowned, GAME-Fort Kinnaird, Edinburgh
White Knight Chronicles: Origins (PSP) 07/31/13, €5 preowned, Free Record Shop, Brugge
Trauma Center: Second Opinion (Wii) £4 preowned, CEX-Edinburgh
Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume (DS) £5 preowned, Game-Perth
Contact (DS) £5 preowned, Game-Perth
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (GBA) 05/16/13, £10 preowned, ebay.co.uk
Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City (DS) 01/24/13, £24.99 new, ebay.co.uk

And a bunch more stuff I bought or got for my birthday:

Pokemon X (3DS)
Pokemon Black 2 (DS)
King's Field (PS1)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 (DS)
Dragon's Crown (PS3)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked (3DS)

I'll try and write some more impressions about these games as I go along. I've been writing this blog post for far too long now.

Artbooks from anime and video games are one of my smaller (some might say niche) collections, and I've picked up quite a few recently, notably the Death Note Obata Takeshi Illustrations, which normally goes for a lot on ebay. I found it in a shop in Brugge when we were on holiday aong with the Midori Foo artbook for really good prices. Some of these are really amazing artbooks. I recommend The Sky to any Final Fantasy fan, as it is now readily available..after that fiasco with the limited original run. Damn Amazon UK...

Obata Takeshi Illustrations - Blanc et Noir
Midori Foo's Book of Pictures
Yoshitaka Amano's The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy Slipcased Edition
Devil Survivor Official Material Collection 
Dragon Age: The World of Thedas volume 1
A Reader's Guide to R.A. Salvatore's The Legend of Drizzt
Diablo III: Book of Tyrael

3 Exams down, 1 more to go!

I'm writing this as one last bit of procrastination as I need to spend most of the day cramming as much Binocular Vision information into my head as I can. Its my final exam of 2nd year tomorrow morning...and I feel least prepared for this one... Then again, I was dreading the other ones and they seemed to go ok.

Recettear is difficult...I actually failed to pay the money back at the end of my first week...Valkyrie Profile Lenneth is kinda difficult as well, but I don't know what else I can do to prevent myself getting owned in battle. Anyway, I've not been playing much of them, just a little bit during the evenings. Perhaps a few hours more in, I'll get into the swing of them..

Hopefully it goes well. I'll get back to posting a bit more regularly after tomorrow as I'll be free for summer!

Recent Purchases #4.5 Photo ver.

As you can see, I like my RPGs...this is why I have such a big backlog of games. They are really awesome as a genre, but they often require a significant amount of time to get through and finish. I did a couple of these posts back a while ago, and this is more in the territory of youtubers, but thought I'd do a little post with some of the stuff I've picked up over the past few weeks.

I went back home the other week and ended up getting to see all the stuff that had arrived in the mail for me, some of which was preordered, some of which was traded for, and a couple of these things I got were just from looking round town for games. So I picked up all of this stuff over the past couple months (maybe this is why I don't have much money...)

Final Fantasy XIII-2 and preorder DLC, steelbook and stuff (PS3) - Got these off ebay for a pretty decent price for a game that recently came out. The preorder stuff was selling on ebay for around £10-12, so I got the game and the preorder stuff in the same auction for around £22 including shipping. I think it went unnoticed because the seller worded things a bit weirdly. Good for me I suppose! =D




The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (PS2)
The Lord of the Rings:  The Two Towers (PS2)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (PS2)

I remember playing through these games back when they first came out and having a lot of fun with them, especially in multiplayer. So, when having a look round one of the second hand electronics shops in the UK, CEX, I found all 3 of them for £5 preowned and decided to give them a shot again =p

 

La Pucelle: Tactics (PS2) - Got this in a trade along with Tales of the World from a friend in NZ. Thanks very much if you read this! =D I was thinking I'd start collecting the NIS RPGs other than the Disgaea games (which are awesome for the record.)



Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology (PSP) - I've not heard brilliant things about this game, but I wanted it for my Tales collection, and it looks like a big departure from the Tales formula, so I'm interested to try it out soon.



The Last Story (Wii) - I reckon this has the best cover art to it out of the three Rainfall titles. £38 for this one. Its got some really good reviews since it came out fairly recently. I am a big fan of Mistwalker and Lost Odyssey was one of my favourite games this generation, so hopefully I'll enjoy this. It looks a lot more forward thinking than LO somehow.



Pandora's Tower (Wii) - the third of the Operation Rainfall RPGs to come out in the UK, completing the set. Very happy to finally get all three. The black Wii box for this game and the art are just awesome. Even though it cost me goddamn £36 from Amazon. I suppoooose its cheaper than what PS3/360 titles would retail for at launch.

Hopefully this wasn't too inane or boring to read... I'll try and update some more meaningful content as my exams go on (and I look around desperately for more methods of procrastination.)

Apologies for all the unneccesary pictures I updated the post with. I figured I might as well because I had them on my computer. I might tone down the size of them if it makes the post look stupid and the text harder to find...

Now Playing - "why you gotta bust my walls like that?!"

Its been a while since I posted one of these on a sunday (or regularly for that matter) so I thought I would try and fix that. I'm about halfway through my semester at uni now, and things are starting to move quite quickly...it'll be a few weeks till we have exams just before summer. Scary thought, but we've had quite a few days off - we get every Tuesday off and barely any classes on Wednesdays. The thing is, I don't really like the fact that we start at 9am some of the days, and in the afternoons on other days. It makes it harder to get a  good routine going. I would actually prefer it was always at 9 or later on. Anyways, tangent aside....I've been playing quite a bit here and there of different games. Hopefully some of them seem interesting to you readers!



Realm of the Mad God (Steam) is a pretty nifty co-op bullet hell MMORPG with a fast paced action battle system. I saw some adverts on Steam for it and probably was drawn in by the sprite artstyle, which looks really good. It has servers of up to 85 at a time, and it really gets fun if you work together in a group, doing what they call an exp train, where a group of players runs along the paths in the world, with attack toggled on. This means you are a really effective weapon, killing the enemies that happen to be nearby. The cool thing is, all the nearby players receive exp whether they shot the enemies or not. This is a really quick way to get to the level cap of 20 (a bit dissapointing perhaps, but there is a lot more to do once you hit that cap.) Oh, I should mention that the game has permadeath like in roguelike RPGs. If you run out of health, you die permanently. I've only really played about 10 or 12 hours of it so far, and seemed to struggle with the bosses in the game (well, the Gods, and the endgame level) as they hit very hard and there is so much going on...I put the game down though, as I felt I wasn't getting anywhere in terms of gear, or understanding tactics for some of the more difficult fights. Somehow it seems like I only scratched the surface on this. Maybe I'll go back to it some day, but for now, I'm concentrating on other games.


I've picked up my save on Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation (DS) again, after I got around 10 or 15 hours into it initially and put it off for a while. I really enjoyed DQIV and DQV on the DS, but this one is proving a bit more difficult for me to fully get into for some reason. I think the story is really slow moving and a bit confusing...especially if you put the game down for a while...so I don't recommend doing that lol. It has the job system of some of the other games, but its a bit easier to master jobs than in DQIX. Nonetheless, it adds a lot of interesting stuff to levelling up your party and building a good team. In fact, they didn't do a lot to actually tell you about the Alltrades Abbey. At one point it just becomes available. So for a while I was progressing through the story without even having jobs for each of my party members...Which reminds me about the way they give you minimal direction (like in many older rpgs) concerning the next story area. I'm not sure if I'm doing optional quests or actually progressing the story right now. All they said was that I had to go out into the world and travel with the aim of becoming a hero. Aside from some flaws, and very slow pacing (but its a Dragon Quest game, so hey, I suppose its expected) I'm enjoying this game and the 25 or 30 hours I've put in so far.

After pretty much a solid day of playing at uni, as well as a good few months of playing through this game  in small bits, I finished the last online urgent quest in Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (PSP), beating the Amatsumagatsuchi. After that I kind of lost interest as I was starting to find solo-ing the remaining double monster online quests difficult. Unlocking Akantor, Ukanlos and Alatreon would prove very difficult...and perhaps I was a bit burnt out after over 200 hours of this game. So I also did a little bit of multiplayer with some friends on Monster Hunter Tri (Wii) once I had finally shaken my obsession with MHP3, which I was worrying would get me re-addicted again, but it didn't thankfully. I got up to HR19 or so in Tri, and it kind of bugs me how slow and dragged out the multiplayer is. I think they just wanted to spread the content as far as they could, but more event quests could have easily done this more effectively. Grinding for HR points is never really that fun, so far at least...


There is a pretty small, but quite cool collection of roguelike RPGs on the IOS store, and I've long wanted to get into this (obscure? It definitely doesn't get much love these days) sub-genre of RPGs. One of the ones that I've kept on my Ipod for a while now has been 100 Rogues (IOS)  I really liked the balancing and quirky sense of humour (although nothing compared to the amazing detailed craziness that is Dungeons of Dredmor) and it kept me sporadically playing through the game with various different character builds. I actually got to the final boss (from what I can tell) with a Wizard before dying. They have some really unbalanced attacks. Teleport can take you anywhere (within reason) nearby and doesn't even cost a turn. If you know how these games work, that can be easily abused, as you can always be at least one step ahead of enemies, attacking from range, or backstabbing if you want. I really recommend 100 Rogues. Since I bought it, it has climbed up to £1.99, which a lot of the better RPGs seem to have done also. I miss the days when most games were less than a pound... Ash (IOS) is another one I played a tiny little bit of. Since the update (2.0 or whatever one it was that massively changed character art and rebalanced the game) I've not really wanted to continue my save, instead I want to start over completely...just to see what has changed. Not to mention the fact that I started to run into really difficult battles after a couple hours in. I just hope its got the same feel..If you are wanting to change a game, I don't see why you would release the original copy only to patch it much later down the line. Make up your mind...Its almost as bad as the DLC nonsense you get nowadays...day 1 DLC...

I picked up Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP) after it dropped in price to £9.99 on the PSN...We don't get a physical release of this game here, and I was ideally wanting to pick up the special edition from America to go with my P2 and P3 PSP special editions, but I would have to pay a shitload more than 9.99 to import it...and it didn't really seem like it was worth it for a 2 disc soundtrack (I'm more keen on artbooks than soundtracks) So I started up a game on this, as I had an urge to get into this series recently, and liked the way it went from the opening (very high school/paranormal anime story-wise) but didn't actually play more than about 10 mins or so. The school you start in is super confusing...

Rage (360) Very nice graphics and world building from the start, but I don't think its that realistic the way they take the story in the first 10 minutes...As soon as you are rescued by an inhabitant at the start of the game, you are taken to his settlement in his car, and immediately sent back the way you came to clear out a bandit hideout. Not so much as a morsel of food, drink, or even a word of explanation concerning the post apocalyptic world you have just woken up in. Just here's a gun, go and get em is about all you get. The enemy AI, animation and gunfire is a bit...unusual I found. There are some nice ideas, so hopefully this game doesn't dissapoint me, I hopefully improve my opinion of it as I go in a bit further.

Dodonpachi Resurrection Deluxe Edition (360) I picked this one up at Christmas with a gift card from Game. It was on sale down to £15ish, and this price is pretty good. I wouldn't want to pay much more, as its a very short game. I like the SHMUP genre but I'm not one of those super crazy fans who import the games from Japan. I can't imagine how dissapointed I would be if I did that, popped it in the 360, and finished the game within a half hour or so... I'll still pick up Akai Katana if it does end up coming out in Europe =D

Now Playing - "Hey granny, give me some miso."

Its been ages since I did one of these posts, well kind of...I did a bit of a massive recap as to what I've been playing recently in the last post...Anyways, I've been playing some games in between uni and other stuff. Actually, I've not done much more for uni other than the lectures and labs in the first week. I have a day off this year(Tuesdays), but apart from that and Wednesdays, its quite a busy timetable. So I've managed to procrastinate to a satisfactory level so far, at least in terms of games... =p


My laptop charger broke for my laptop a few days before Christmas. Either my dad is psychic and knew that was going to happen, or it was his need to buy uneccessary new gadgets every christmas. Either way, him and my mum got me a laptop for Christmas, which I am still trying to get used to. The touchpad is a bit annoying, as it will often jump if I am typing and touch it, highlighting words I've typed, so what happens is I either start typing a few paragraphs back or just deleting huge chunks of text. So thats a bit annoying. Its also managed to crash and blue screen a few times.. I don't think its the greatest laptop ever, but its new and shiny =) I still want to pick up a replacement charger for my old laptop as it has a lot of files on it with my uni stuff, bookmarks, music, save games for some of my steam games and a few other things I could use. Well I'd rather have access to them than not. Then again, money is a bit of an issue...I need to somehow ration my money at the moment, eating frugally and all that, purchase a few of the games that come out in the February-March onslaught (I'm going to figure out what ones need to be bought that won't be available in shops after launch or the ones that will go up in price hugely.), and save enough money for presents around the time as well. I could really use a job.

So the things I'd really want to get if I have the money: I don't think The Last Story (PAL special edition) will be able to wait. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 might be a good pickup, but might go cheaper on ebay over time, like I'm hoping to do with Radiant Historia... Also I'll have to get Tales of Graces f whenever that comes out in Europe. Tales of the Abyss didn't even come out in shops so I don't want to risk not being able to find it...
Games that will have to wait (and there are some excellent looking games here..) Final Fantasy XIII-2, Mass Effect 3 (really would like to pick this up if I can)

The February-March slew of games releases has started and it looks like I'n going to have to wait a bit to play FFXIII-2, hopefully I'll be able to pick some games up when they drop in price a little bit.


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After finishing off Tales of Phantasia a few weeks back (around the 20th of December that I finished that one...I only remember because it was my last day of Semester A, and I had a dentist appointment the same day) I started up Tales of the Abyss (3DS) and played it for a few weeks, putting in just over 60 hours to finish the main story. I found the characters a little annoying at times. Perhaps the main character annoyed me at first, but he really grew on me with time. He had some lines where it actually made me burst out laughing, just from how obscenely impolite, brash and arrogant he is. The story went through quite a strange turn at some point (I'm being deliberately vague, as many people may not want it spoiled) and this lead to the group of characters becoming a bit seperated and essentially abandoning the main character. As comrades, they are all ridiculously secretive and ready to drop each other at the slightest thing. Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with the way the story went, it takes a few twists and turns before turning out quite nicely. Graphically, it doesn't seem like they have done much with the game though, it looks nice for sure, but it doesn't seem to change much from the original PS2 game. Thats the same with a lot of aspects. It doesn't really include the 3D element to a great extent or put more in in terms of additions. So it remains a pretty solid, but not that different, port of the PS2 RPG. So it comes recommended if you can find a copy of this game. It didn't really seem to come out in shops anywhere on the UK high street. So I really hope online sales are good and Namco Bandai decide to bring more Tales games like Graces f and Xillia our way.

Actually, after playing this and finishing it, I started up a new game+ as I really like the way newer Tales games use the grade shop so you can buy bonuses for the next playthrough and always wanted to try it. And it seems I will do some more of this game now. After going back to uni and having Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (PSP) take up a lot of my time, I think I'll be playing some more 3DS. I signed up for a 4th year Optometry student's dissertation project. They were looking for volunteers to assess any deterioration or improvement to the binocular vision system's ability to fuse images and perceive 3D stereoscopic images after using the 3DS for an hour per week. I was quite interested in the sound of the project (being an Optom student myself, and owning a 3DS) and to see the outcome of their study if I can in the end. So I'll be playing Tales of the Abyss (3DS) in the 2D mode (as part of the control group) for a new game+ run. He did mention that since me and my friend had 3DS's, we should use our own and since we were quite big gamers, our fusion was quite good already. My friend Kris was nearly off the chart using a prism bar test to assess his brain's ability to fuse double vision(diplopia) together. Damn kids and their young eyes... If you are interested more in the study I'm taking part in, feel free to email me or comment below. I don't think I've explained things too well in the post here.


Over the Christmas break I played a lot of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PS3) with my girlfriend (who I must thank for getting me Skyrim!) and got through the main story eventually. Its really an amazing, enthralling game at times. There are a few faults I found that kind of detracted from my experience. Perhaps playing on the PS3 was not the best choice, but I heard that both console releases were (equally?) buggy and glitchy. Sometimes it will  lead to hilarious glitching out objects in the world or unusual sights such as Wooly Mammoths falling from the sky randomly.




Some of the AI isn't done too well. Companions or people travelling with you will sometimes dissapear or get confused by other NPCs, terrain, stairs (OMG Lydia, learn how to use stairs!) and other things. It just doesn't seem well polished enough for an Elder Scrolls game. I realise they HAD to get it out for that really nice release date (11.11.11) but it really could of benefited from some extra testing. Sure, it is a massive game, and play testing must be an absolute nightmare, but come on Bethesda. Nonetheless, it is a very good game, and I really enjoyed playing through it. Amazing music and some very good world building here. Definitely one of the better games to come out last year.

I started up Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation (DS) after I couldn't decide what to play. I have a lot of DS and PSP games that I need to get through, and I asked my girlfriend to pick out on for me from a handful, I think which included Tales of the Abyss (NG+), Valkyrie Profile Lenneth, Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation. So I've put in about 15 or 20 hours to this game so far and I think its quite different to the other games closely related to it (IV and V namely.) I'm liking the degree of mystery and how they are not explaining things right away, building the story up slowly. Actually, the game is a little slow moving at times and I think, like with all DQ games, that can put people off. In fact I've been taking a break from this game due to my current MHP3rd obsession, and I hope to go back to this game soon before I forget too much of the story. Maybe the 3DS project I'm taking part in will make me play this after my hour-per-day sessions.

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OH! I nearly forgot completely! I was going to do a seperate post for an event I went to recently, I might leave my impressions to that post. All I'll say is that I got to play the Vita a week or two ago at a pre-launch event Sony had brought all across the UK (I  think?) Stay tuned for that in the next day or two. I'll be giving mini reviews of a lot of the launch games and what I think of the system itself. =)

Live Cookie munching (Cookie picks #2)

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

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)

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

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.

Some games that look rather awesome :D

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"

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.

Now Playing - "Sticky Banana"

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"

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

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.