Resident Evil 6 (PS3): Taking Cues from the Movies.

I used to love Resident Evil. Actually, that probably isn't fair because I'd like to think I still do. When I go back to reflect on the series on the series as a whole, I can honestly say that there weren't any major disappointments. Sure, there were some bumps in the road (See Resident Evil: Survivor, Dead Aim, and Outbreak) but all and all the main core of the Resident Evil series was consistently good.

1, 2, 3, and Code Veronica continued to improve on a format I enjoyed. Then Nintendo of all people threw us a curve ball and threw us a nice glossy remake of this first game and prequel in Resident Evil Zero, both of which I loved.. Things were looking great and then they shook up the whole industry with Resident Evil 4, which stands as probably the best game on the Gamecube. Completely shook up the formula on how its played and was hugely successful. 5 tried to follow suit and throw in co-op but it never took off like the 4 did. It wasn't a bad game it just wasn't as great as 4.

So it was with somewhat of a heavy heart I picked up my version of Resident Evil 6. I was pretty excited to pick the game but the week before the game was released, a number of pretty credible review sources started unceremoniously smashing the game with poor reviews. I still picked the game up, but now its with the curiosity if this series truly could have stepped so off the mark. 

RESIDENT EVIL 6 ANTHOLOGY (PS3)

Its usually at this point in my reviews I like to give a recap of the story. But really that is becoming exceedingly more difficult to do as each release in this series comes out. This series has never really been known for its excellent story telling, but I'll try to give it a shot. The story takes place near the end of 2012 and tries to interweave 3(4) stories to Resident Evil 6's complex tale. It bases of crossing events of Leon Kennedy, Chris Redfield, and Jake Muller.

Leon is currently at the side of fictitious 2012 president Adam Benford. He planned to release the truth about the Raccoon City Incident of so many years ago, in an attempt to try to quell the influx of bio-terrorism. However, they are attacked by a group called Neo-umbrella and basically the Raccoon City Incident is repeated. Leon is forced to shoot down the now infected president, and secret service agent, Alena Harper (who looks like Lori from Walking Dead but is about 8 billion times less of a cunt) tells him if he follows her to the cathedral, he will find answers.

"I don't give a shit that you lost Carl again."

Chris is spending his days getting shitfaced in a dive bar in Europe battling a colossal depression (at first, I thought this was a game starring me). He is confronted by his former BSAA subordinate Piers McNotfuckingimportant for abandoning his unit. You come to learn that Chris lost a squad of soldiers in a mission gone awry thanks to the betrayal of Ada Wong, whom at the time they thought they were saving. Chris then takes up his gun again in vengeance with sole goal of finding Ada and killing her.

Finally, Jake we see actually starting this story (in a chronological perspective) working as a mercenary in Edonia. He is given some kind of injection by Ada Wong that doesn't affect him, but mutates his colleges into BOW monsters. He's then confronted by special US agent Sherry Birken (the same little girl from Resident Evil 2). She is tasked to bring Jake to the US because he has the anti-bodies that might be able to provide a cure to BOW terrorism, and Jake goes along with her under the expectation of high compensation.

So ok, we start out hopeful. Lots of story campaigns and hopefully starting tie this series together a bit. But my first question is, where the fuck is Claire? After they tried to turn Jill Valentine into Nina Williams from Tekken I am terrified to find out what happened to one of my favorite protagonists in the series. You know what? Nevermind, I'd rather just imagine her chilling on her couch watching tv then have her get dragged in this mess again (the writing, not the situation).

Which one is Jill again? I can't fucking tell anymore.
Get a new character archetype, gaming industry.

So to keep this as brief as I can I won't go through every chapter, just shit that really stood out to me. To start off, You get to choose which of the two characters you can play as in the campaign which I thought was a nice gesture. But also before you start the game, you can choose to turn off the online settings and play offline with an AI partner, which I couldn't do fast enough. You all  by now should know my feelings on Online multiple player communities, but if you don't here's the cliff notes: Fuck multiplayer up the ass with a salt covered wicker dildo.

Leon's chapter starts off incredibly sluggishly. After cinematic you are treated to slowly walking a survivor through darkened abandoned corridors. I almost would have looked past how slow the segment took to do if they were trying to set a legitimate horror pace. But no, right after the appearance of the first zombie all sense of pacing is thrown right out the goddamn window with a stream of nonstop zombies. Cool, but not Resident Evil.

The J'avo are a billion times more annoying the Palagas were.

I picked up the game with relative ease, the controls all felt pretty familiar. I just had to get used to the little quirks to navigate the menu as you can't really pause the action to browse your inventory. I was fighting I noticed that it wasn't using the laser sighting system I remembered from Resident Evil 4 or 5. It was using the recital system. That alone didn't bother me, but the recoil of gunshots was ridiculously off. Every two shots you were completely off target. In addition to that, there's no guarantee you can hit the head shot because the red dot in your recital doesn't hold still either. It was fucking annoying.

But moving on a little father in the level I reached a quick time event where I had to outrun an explosion. I died on it multiple times because up until this point, you had to mash a button to escape these. In Resident Evil 6 you have to just hold the button down and the "hey idiot" indication at the bottom did not really clarify that. By putting up instructions, I thought it was giving me different controls. Highly frustrating.

Then I was struck with a realization, and sour one at that. I was not playing Resident Evil. Sure, the box said Resident Evil 6 on it, and it had characters from the series. But nothing about this game felt like the formers of the franchise. Even with Resident Evil 4's overhauling, it still sort of felt like an RE game with the tank style controls, and core concepts still in place. With this kind of game mechanics, this game could have just as easily been "Uncharted 4: Drake and friends fight a bunch of zombies" and it would have been just as relevant and more tolerable.

Boss Fights can get a little clusterfucky at best.

But don't get me wrong, there isn't really anything wrong with these mechanics. Its why it felt so familar when I played it. But when I shill out 60 bucks to play the new Resident Evil, I expect to be treated to a new fucking Resident Evil. If I wanted to play a generic 3rd person shooter I could have picked up almost ANY fucking game on the shelf. Its so cookie cutter in its overall design I'm left with this complete disappointment that I've been ripped off.

Anyways, back to the game. I usually like to take a few lines to talk about the score or the music. But as is with pretty much every Resident Evil game, the music is completely unimpressive. None of it memorable, none of it lasting. Score fits great for each scene as they come, but none of them leave a lasting impression.

All of the campaigns in the game tell a different story, but nearly all of them follow the exact same format in have very similar puzzles. A massive indiscretion of this is ALL of them have a section where you have to escape like 3 unkillable enemies while trying to find 3 separate keys to unlock a door. The setting is different, but every character has to do it, and they are all chased by the same type of monster at the time. Its incredibly lazy.

Sherry has no idea what she's doing.

While I'm on the subject of unkillable monsters, this is something else they abuse this time around. Ok, so Resident Evil likes to have that one boss that's just menacing and non-stop.  Resident Evil 2 had the Tyrant and he'd appear in various rooms as your progressed in the game.  Resident Evil 3 had the Nemesis who would hound you for a few rooms at a time and was a thorn in your side nearly the whole game. Resident Evil 4 and 5 had difficult enemy types that would reoccur often. All of these are fine.

But Resident Evil 6, the bosses just don't fucking die. Period. Every single time a character would say "we got him!" or "It's finally dead" only to open one door and have that same mother fucker right back on your ass. It happens on nearly every significant boss in the game.  Even more frustrating is they keep mixing up what it takes to kill said bosses. Sometimes you just need to last a timer. Sometimes you need do enough damage. Sometimes you have just empty all of your ammo to trigger the end sequence. It makes it nearly impossible to ration your ammo properly and proves to be constant headache.

Ustanak is RE6's knock off version of the Nemesis. A tough kill,
 but not nearly the menace the Nemesis was.

I also love how true to the series it tried to be in this installment. Having to do such classic Resident Evil moments like Metal Gear Solid style stealth sections, an Ace Combat style dogfight, or trying to outrun an avalanche on snow mobiles. Wait, no. I'm thinking of other games, none of this shit happened in other Resident Evil games. SO WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY IN THIS ONE? I suppose for story, thematic, and theatrics they fit cohesively, but again: Its not fucking Resident Evil!

"Ok fuck this. If your going to force me to do stealth you can at least give me a chance."

So after all this ranting, you can basically assume I hate this game, right? Well not so fast. The game is loaded with flaws, but I'm not so quick to dismiss it, there are a handful of things that I like. By the game being kind of cookie cutter in its design, it was very easy to acclimated to the controls. Each of the campaigns had something I liked. Leon's story was best, Chris had the best boss fights, Jake had the best characters.

They brought back the Mercenaries mode, which was probably one of my favorite things in the franchise. I loved it in Resident Evil 3 and 4. Even with all my gripes about how this version of the game plays differently, when that clock is ticking on the top of the screen and I'm scrambling to find the best spot to hole up and shoot, all of the complaints are immediately forgotten and I work on boosting that score. It can be done two player as well, which I'm actually interested in trying.

They also have something called agent hunt, where you get to play as the crappy weaker monsters and try to take down someone actually trying to complete the story mode. This to me is a great concept because it really ups the challenge of the game, or allows you to just ruin somebody's day. It was very satisfying to watch some asshat have to waste both his first aid sprays because I keep tackling him with a zombie dog.

And graphically the game has never looked better. All of the characters (except for Chris's massive muscle tone) are life like and believable. Although, someone at Capcom must really be an ass man, because whenever you have to crawl through a duct or something the cam zooms in so far up ass of the player I'm actually afraid we'll need to wipe brown off the lens (When playing Sherry, That ain't so bad. When playing Leon.... Uh, not so much.).

I'm sure we all had this moment when playing Sherry or Ada.

Lastly, I paid the extra 20 bucks for the Anthology edition, so my copy of the game came with the codes to download the first 5 games, which does include the gold edition of 5 and HD version of 4. Which personally I thought was an awesome deal, since now I don't have to dig out the gamecube if I wanted to play RE4 again. I would have liked it have Code Veronica as well, but that one appears on the Xbox version.  Can't get greedy I guess. Still a great deal.

So I guess after all of this the real question is "How do I rate this?" I guess the best way to do this is to be as lukewarm as my feelings. The game is Average, cookie cutter, run of the mill. Doesn't deserve the hideous reviews its gotten but doesn't deserve the great ones either.

If you are looking to continue on with the Resident Evil mytho's baffling storyline they by all means pick it up. If you are looking for another shooter to kill your time until the next stupid Medal of Halo: Advanced Duty Black Cocks 3 comes out then I suppose you could do worse than Resident Evil 6. But don't expect this game to really wow you in any sense of the word.

But if you are fan of Resident Evil.  And I mean REALLY a fan of the series, you may wanna sit this one out. Much like the Resident Evil movie they seemed to think it was totally ok to just come up with a generic 3rd person shooter, and just tossed in the Resident Evil characters and that was good enough. Guess what, it's not. Somewhere along the way this franchise lost its spark, and with the constant middle finger Capcom keeps throwing to its customer base? I don't think they care to find it.

Oh yeah, and the Bowgun still sucks bag of dicks.

Persona 3 FES (PS2): The fascination continues...

So as you read a few months ago, I fell completely in love with the Persona universe when I started playing Persona 4 Arena. Playing through the story really got me into the characters and I wanted to know more about it. As I played that I downloaded and watched the Persona 4 anime as well. A fun but somewhat cut down recap of the events of Persona 4 with some characters from 3 spruced in there. But as I watched it, I reflected on that I never actually finished Persona 3. The game had a crazy difficulty spike and because of it I set the game down and never finished it. But with this re-invigoration of mine with the Persona series I decided to dust off the ole PS2 and give it one more go.

PERSONA 3: FES (PS2)

You take the role of Insert Name (in my case Akira Mizaki since this takes place in Japan), a 16ish year old transfer student to Gekkoukan High who has lost his parents. While your are traveling via train, the animation cuts to a young girl holding a gun to her head, breathing heavy and trying to pull the trigger.  Exasperatedly she drops the gun and buries her face in her knees. Upon transferring in and coming into the dorm where you will be staying, you are greeted by a young boy in striped pajama's and he makes you sign a contract stating you will take responsibility for your actions.

After signing the contract you come across the same girl from the scene transition, and is in panic wanting to know why you are there. As she goes to pull the gun, another student named Mitsuru Kurijo stops her and informs her that you'll be here for a bit, and introduces you to her as Yukari Takeba. Cooler heads prevail and you all crash for the night.

The next few days you begin adjusting to school life until one evening there is seemingly a monster attack, as a large beast is chasing another dorm student. Yukari takes you to the roof to escape where you are cornered by the beast. And in a desperation move, she goes to use the gun she has but drops it as she brings it to her head. The protagonists picks it up with eyes dilated and holds it to his own head and pulls the trigger, unleashing a monster that lays waste to the one that was attacking you. 

You come to find out that you were actually being watched by this dorm, as they are actually a task force called SEES who assembled to fight these monsters called shadows, who only appear in a hidden hour that takes place between midnight and 12:01am called the Dark Hour. Only a select few can fight in this hour, and they implore you for your help to fight the monsters and end the Dark Hour by investigating a massive tower that appears during it.

Sorry that was a bit a mouthful. The game is essentially a blend of a Dungeon Crawler, JRPG, and High School simulation. During the day you have to attend school, keep your grades up, join clubs and maintain relationships. All of these social ties affect your ability to create Personas, which affect you characters statistics and what spells they can use. As you level you can create new Personas by mixing the ones you have together to create better stronger ones, and in some cases transfer abilities from one to the others. 

At nights you can explore the Tartarus, the mysterious tower that appears where their school is every night during the Dark Hour. An apparent nest of shadows, the goal is to go in and push upwards as best you can before the night of a full moon. In the tower you can grind for experience, items, money, or new personas. But you don't want to stay in for too long, your character can become exhausted or sick, which will effect your ability to perform during the day. So the whole game you have to strike a balance between all of these things in an attempt to maintain pace with everything.

While dealing with maintaining friendships in the game can be kind of tedious at times, many of the characters have some very funny dialogs about them when you hang out. Some of them have problems you need to help them through to help strengthen the bond, but you need to know their personality quirks to get the best results to evolve the relationship. My two favorites were Kirijo and Maya. Kirijo is funny because she's the rich heiress to massive conglomerate, so she is positively baffled at how to eat at a fast food restaurant since the food is so cheap and there is no silverware. Maya is a player you meet in an online game who just speaks in excessive l33t, and while those are funny, the best is the payoff at the end when you finally meet face to face. Its not often during a game I actually find myself laughing out loud, but it was totally worth it.

So if you haven't been able to tell up to this point, the game is directed to a very niche audience. I love the idea in concept, but some of its execution falls a little bit flat. For one thing, you actually have to pay attention to the lectures in school. Because getting good grades raises your academics and charm, which you need to befriend certain characters and make certain persona types stronger. Some of the lectures are fucking long and boring (just like in real high school!) and a lot of the time you don't even get a hint to the question before you have to guess at it.

This guy never shuts his fucking mouth. Just find a walkthrough with the answers.

Then when the school day actually ends, traveling from location to location can get a bit tedious. If I wanted to date Kirijo I would groan because that would mean I would have to walk all the way to the other side of the school. While the movement speed is fast there is at least 3 or 4 screen transitions. God forbid I needed to buy new equipment first because then I gotta walk my ass out of the school, ride to the mall, buy my shit, walk all the way back before I could go on my date. I can be tedious because its pointless walking. There is a place where you can jump right out of the school to the travel menu which is handy, but its only in one spot so that can be annoying.

The music has a handful of notable and catchy songs, and some of them are just awful. I am a big fan of the "Burn My Dread" song from the beginning of the game, its got a catchy kinda techno-y rap kinda thing going for it. But on the other hand, I would hate exploring the Tartarus because it has this dismally boring piano rhythm of like 3 to 5 notes. Make sure you have your own music on standby. Midway through the game you can change the dungeon BMG but none of the selections are all that spectacular.

I really like this f'n song.

The dungeon crawling is pretty well done. The map is constantly changing except for boss floors or section transition floors. You can travel as a team or split people up to fight shadows or look for treasures. Most of the time you will explore with the group because as I mentioned before, this game can have a huge difficulty spike and being caught alone if you are under leveled can be certain doom. Almost every level has an escape  which you can use to get out and recover your health and magic if you are out of items, but if you don't make it to the boss floors you have to do that same section you just completed over again (luckily, you don't have to beat the boss to escape down on their floors, so you should do so anyways to recover, save, THEN tackle the boss.)

I stuck with small swords, It was much easier to time preemptive strikes.

The combat follows the JRPG team leader format. You have full control of your character and you can give vague instructions to the rest of your team for how you would like them to perform. Players of the Pokemon series will feel right at home because it operates in the same way. Many of the shadows feature some form of weakness and if you can strike their weakness (or get a critical hit) you can knock them down and have an opportunity to attack again. If you can knock down all of the enemies, you can go in for a massive team bum rush for big damage.

But you need to be careful because your own persona's have strengths and weaknesses too, which means you do as well. So its important to get a feel for what kind of monsters you are facing on a floor and what abilities your teammates have so you don't wind up getting floored every turn and crushed. You can revive teammates but if the main character bites it, game over.

My big tip is this: early in the game, you can fuse a demon girl called Lilim. She is probably the best personas to fuse early because she really only has a weakness to Light magic (few enemies use light), and has the ability to have all 4 major elements at the same time. With the right type of stat boosting items (like things that raise strength, magic, and luck), she can end up being a persona you can ride for most of the game, I made it nearly to end with her because while the spells may not have had the same power by the end, they still knocked things down for a massive attack. Figure out how to make them and make sure the fusion gives her all 4 elements.

She doesn't have Bufu, but if she did instead of Marin or the Rak's
this would be one of the best 4-Elements Lilims you could make.

I had to tone down the difficultly in this game to get all the way through it. But in hindsight I am glad that I did. Yeah the game could get a little slow from time to time, especially when I was waiting for full moons to proceed with the game. But it has a likable cast and follows a pretty tried and true JRPG format that I had a good deal of fun with. Story featured some twists and turns and had some pretty interesting moments. I can see why this game didn't take the world by storm, but I can also see why the Persona series has the cult following it does.

Persona 3 FES also features a bonus chapter that extends upon the ending staring Aigis, but I only played it a little bit to set that aside to move on to Persona 4 (and it kind of makes the ending of game a punch in the crotch). If you are looking to give this a try, you can try to find it on the ps2, they updated the game slightly for the PSP release, and looks like it can also be found on the PlayStation store under PS2 Classics. I believe the PSP version has updated combat which borrows elements from Persona 4 and a female main character as well, to change your dating options. If the PSP game can be played on PS3? Get that one.

One thing I can definitely say about this series is this: If the game didn't have my interest before, it fucking has me now.

If only I grew up in Japan...
Maybe I coulda grew up as popular as I was in this....

Dead Trigger (Android): I got zombie in my front pocket for you.

So, the summer drought kicked my ass. I had nothing to review. Now we're are getting into the fall months and aside from one new title, I haven't had much to go on. And since I felt a blog post about the Library Science crap I am studying would not make for an interesting read, I thought I would talk about something that caught my eye.

If you are like me, you have been following the potential new system coming out called the Ouya. The open source android console. But in the video found on the Kickstarter and the Ouya site in the interface screen there is a option for something called Dead Trigger. I did a little digging and found that most of the options on that screen were just games currently on the android platform, and since I was clawing for something to do, a new zombie game seemed great. The screens shots seemed impressive but how would it hold up on my phone?

DEAD TRIGGER:(Android)

There's a story in the game. But to be honest, I haven't read a lick of it. Why would I? Who in this zombie pop culture world we live in would need me to recap the story in this one? I bet it goes something like this: "There was one zombie, now there is a lot of them. Now you have to shoot guns at them to survive, get supplies, and save people" We all caught up to speed? Great, because if on my phone and it's not an RPG, I really could give a damn less what the story is.

Dead Trigger is a first person shooter designed for the mobile phone platforms. It was primarily a Android game but I believe it is available for the Iphone now as well. This definitely lends to play easier on the larger phones such as my HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S3, or the Iderp 5. You can also play it on  tablets pretty well, although using my dad's 10 inch tablet it was somewhat hard to control even with my massive hulk hands.

The controls of the game were actually fairly responsive and intuitive. The left lower corner of the screen functions as an analog pad and allows your character to move and strafe with fairly regular FPS controls. On the right side there are a series of buttons: Fire, Reload, Iron Sight. All of them respond rather easily and fluidly to a level I got comfortable with them with ease. The blank area above these buttons you can use to turn the camera which allows you to strafe and circle enemies. What is also handy is while you are holding down the fire button, you can make subtle turns from there as well, allowing you to make adjustments to your shots as you fire.

The graphics in this game are VERY impressive for a game designed for a mobile platform. I'd go as far to say that the graphics look almost on par if not better than how games looked on the original PlayStation, Or possibly the PlayStation 2. Actually, I'd definitely say PS2, zombies in Dead Trigger were easily much more detailed than the zombies that were found in Resident Evil: Code Veronica, (I know that was on Dreamcast first, but I'm using it as a frame of reference. I played it on PS2 first anyways). 

The music is really nothing to write home about, but I don't really expect mobile games to have an incredible score. Which is kind of disappointing when I reflect upon it. I can think of a number of SNES games that have amazing soundtracks and they were incredibly fulfilling to the point that they are permanently ingrained in my head. I understand you can't put chiptunes sets into non sprite games these days, but I think if you went a little longer than some droning music loops that are featured in many mobile games, they might be a more satisfying experience. Sorry, I'm getting off track.

Generally, the missions have been broken down into three main categories: Hunt, Survive, Retrieve. Up to where I have played, the goals are simple and not usually much variety to the rules. All of them involve gunning down zombies, just sometimes you have a set number to kill, number of minutes to wait, or go to point A and back to B. I haven't been playing many of the story missions yet though so perhaps that will change. 

You can earn money by going to the casino or ranking well on the missions and that allows you to buy upgrades at the shop. Not all the upgrades or weapons are available though because there are two forms of currency. Money you earn during the course of the game. Gold you can win at the casino, but the real way to get it is to pay real money for it or sign up for promotions or surveys. I'll pass, thank you very much.

While there does seem to be a constantly changing blend of zombies, I have yet to come across any boss fights yet, which is a little disappointing because every good zombie game needs boss fights. Perhaps there will be some as do more of the story missions, but so far? No sign of em.

While I am not much of a first person shooter type of guy, I am really getting into this game. Its not frustrating to play and it the levels are the perfect length for the mobile platform. Its something you can whip out and play with for a few minutes and be able to come back to it. Yes some of the levels get a bit repetitive but as I said I haven't been playing the story mode so much so that could change. The best part about it the game is free to download on both IOS and Android so if you've got a newer smartphone that has the power to run it, I would suggest giving it a download.

Slender (PC): Finally, Someone remembered how to do horror right.

I had never heard about this game before now. But a friend passed a long a Rooster Teeth (who I friggen love, by the way) video of "Rage Quit", where Micheal and Gavin Co-Play Slender together. It's fairly typical Rage Quit fanfare, but the game looked pretty creepy. But as I was dicking around on another online game, another discussion of it came up talking about how scary it is. After hearing about it in two different places twice in one day and that it was free to play, I decided to take a crack at it.

SLENDER:(PC)

So if you go by the storyline provided to you in the actual game, the story of Slender is "Collect 8 pieces of paper." I had to do a bit of research on but as I understand it, the paraphrased legend of the Slender Man goes like this: the buzz about the legend of the Slender Man started (created?) on the Something Awful forums in the late 90's, but parallels to the legend seem to document well before that.  He stands at about 8-15 feet tall and has extraordinarily large limbs, occasionally with tendrils coming from him. 

Supposedly is able to access a 4th dimension it allows him to seemingly vanish and appear without a trace, although modern camera equipment has been able to capture him, however his abilities distort it. He has an affinity for children, and kidnaps them for reasons only known to him, but has been known to attack adults. He will stalk his target from days to years, gradually picking away at their sanity and sending them into a serious state of paranoia, where he tends to lure people to his favored hunting ground, typically a forest.

He stalks his prey, causing them to panic before triggering a complete breakdown and shatters their mind to a nearly catatonic state. He and his victim vanish with many cases of the victim never being found again, although some cases report the body being found impaled on a tree branch and left to bleed to death. The slender man in these cases will remove each of the organs one at a time, place them in a plastic bag, and then replace them into the body before leaving them. Motivations are never known, but apparently there seems to be no pattern for how the Slender Man chooses his victims aside of what strikes his fancy. (Information on the Slender man Lore found at http://theslenderman.wikia.com)

So yeah, that's horrifying premise this game is based upon. You play what I assume is meant to be yourself, you are in a fenced in area of the forest and you are trying to find 8 manuscript pages left behind by the Slender man. 

The controls are fairly simple, you use your mouse to look around and the mouse buttons to pick up pages or kill your flashlight. Movement is the standard gamer PC WSDA movement set up, with two buttons to zoom and holding left shift to jog. That's it. That's all you get. I struggle to find a comparison to this game from its play alone but I supposed I could say its Myst meets Amber meets Alan Wake? That's probably not accurate but yeah, a horrifying version of Myst seems the most right.

While much of the game takes place in darkness in dim wooden areas,
the fog and atmosphere are rendered beautifully.

The game starts you off at sort of a calm pace but there is already a lot of tension right as you begin. All you can hear as you walk around the forest are the sounds of your footsteps on the underbrush. The occasional chirping of a cricket or the flutter of a nearby bird. You are bound by the restriction of the fence, but the movement rate is pretty slow. It causes this gradual level of tension as you walk around, as if you were actually walking scared in the woods: slow, uneasy, and alarmed. It definitely puts you in the right mindset for this kind of game. 

You are generally safe when you first start the game up, as you have yet to do anything to upset the Slender Man. But if you happen to stumble upon one of the pages of his manuscript and take one, then the chase begins. The game doesn't exactly feature music but rather a series of low resonating drones that you'd hear in horror films. it does a wonderful compliment to build the unease and you immediately know that now he is after you, and with each page you pick up the droning because louder and more intense as the slender man draws near...

You will always know when the Slender Man is closing in on you because the screen gradually get more static and garbled as he draws near. So if static starts to pick up on the screen, you want to turn your ass around as quick as possible. Sometimes you can catch a brief glimpse of him, but more often than not you will be too panicked to try to stare him down. It will also shake the shit out of you each time you stumble across him with a loud pang of noise whenever you get too close. 

Probably one of the creepiest aspects is he sometimes has a very Jason Voorhees method of stalking you. There will be times where I have caught a glimpse of him and turned around and ran a few steps. But when I turned back around he was clearly much closer than when I first ran away from him. So I would turn around again and run a much further distance thinking it was safe to turn back around, only to find that he was even closer this time.  

If he is this close? You are probably already fucked. 

I at one point had the brilliant idea that maybe he was tracking me by the movement of my flashlight, so when the static started to appear I killed the light and turned around and slowly creeped away. I managed to make it a good number of steps, thinking that I was completely home free when he suddenly appeared right in front of me with a loud DUNNNNN causing me to violently shit my pants in fear and was immediately caught. So don't make the same mistake I did, the Slender man does not give a shit and half about your flashlight.

Last thing you see before you die.....

I have yet let last any more than 3 or 4 pages in this game before he gets me. It seems like the pages are in the same places each time but I've yet to get far enough into the game to confirm that with certainty. That's really all there is to explain about that game because that's about as deep as it goes. But if you'll notice, I have been practically gushing about this game as I have and explained each of its parts and I can tell you why that is..

These developers understand the keys to great horror game. Somewhere along the line devs forgot the simple rules that make a game terrifying. First off, nothing makes a game scarier than a feeling of being completely helpless. Old Resident Evil games worked because the ability to move was awful, and you had very limited shots. Silent Hill? Same concept: you are alone, everything seems to be after you, and your basically fighting for your life with a stick. Fatal Frame, throngs of ghosts coming at you with murderous intent and all you have to defend yourself is a camera. All of these games emphasize on the point that if you are trapped you are basically fucked and your only real course of defense is to flee. You are always tense. 

Two, low visibility. Lets face it, even as adults we can be afraid of the dark. By narrowing down the scope of your vision, you are constantly looking over your should and checking around for any imminent danger. You NEVER feel safe. Knowing that the threat is constantly waiting for you and stalking you, and you have a dim flashlight in a foggy forest to find him. The shadows and fog constantly play tricks on you and makes you see things that are not there.

Three, music and sound are terrifying. A brilliantly written horror music score can certainly raise the tension, but nothing is quite scarier than a break in the silence that you didn't cause. From a quiet forest ambiance to a increasingly menacing drone, the sound constantly pushes your level of fear that he is closing in on you, and rocks your readiness with loud pangs every time you accidentally stumble upon your predator. It is executed perfectly.

Lastly, they understood that less you can see of a monster or enemy the scarier it is. So they go to great lengths to try design the game where you are penalized for trying to see him. Sometimes he will completely vanish from right in front of you, but if you keep your gaze on him the screen scrambles as your sanity vanishes, resulting in a game over. It keeps you running from an unknown that you can't see, and it makes it that much more terrifying as a result.

For quite a while I was starting to wonder if people knew how to make good horror games anymore, as I watched all my favorite horror game franchises turn into fast paced action shooters. It was disappointing. However, this game has shown me that some people out there still get "it" and can still come up with some pretty original concepts from ones used before, and use simple tricks of light & sound to turn me into the frightened 5 year old kid I once was.

So crank up your video card settings, turn off the lights, turn up sound, and slip into your favorite brand of disposable undergarments and give Slender a shot. I doesn't cost you a dime to play and you can find it for free at http://slendergame.com/. If this game doesn't get your heart rate pumping, I'd call a mortician because you are probably dead.

Now if you will excuse me... I have to change my pants. 

Persona 4 Arena (PS3): Guilty Gear's sexy but slightly dumber cousin.

The Persona franchise has always somewhat intrigued me to a degree. I remember back when I worked at Derpbuster Video I found a copy of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment and flipped through the instructions. What immediately grabbed my attention is that one of the characters persona's wrists were bound and was in spider tie bondage with a high heel grinding into her mask (which probably says all kinda weird things about my tastes). Sadly, the game was broken so I couldn't investigate the game further. But it kinda stuck with me.

I ended up trying Persona 3 later on the PS2. I liked the game a lot but the difficulty spike was retarded so I never finished it. When Persona 4 came out, I barely had a reason to hook up my PS2 so I never purchased it. The reason for this trip down memory lane is Persona 4 has a come up with a sequel called.....

PERSONA 4: ARENA (PS3)

What grabbed my attention to this game is even though it is a direct sequel to Persona 4, it's a completely different style of game. The Persona series generally is a cross between a JRPG and a Japanese school simulation. But this game is neither of those, its actually just a regular old one on one fighter. Interesting change but not exactly revolutionary. Final Fantasy has tried this twice, and it wouldn't be the first time one genre of game changed formats. Disgaea gave us Prinny: Can I really be the Hero? and that game was fucking awesome.

But then I noticed it was not only published by Atlus but also that it was produced by Arc Systems, the creators of the Guilty Gear series. Now, I may have been a bit late to the party, but I fucking love Guilty Gear. It's quickly become one of my favorite fighters, but I've been eagerly awaiting a new one of them. Looking over the images and videos of this game, it looks like it borrows a lot of mechanics used in Guilty Gear in the same ways BlazBlue did. With that alone, that was enough for me to take a leap of faith on this one....

The story takes place about year after the events of Persona 4. The heroes are proceeding with their scholastic career, and going about their lives as normal students. But they begin to hear rumors that the Midnight Channel, the mysterious program that would indicate someones forthcoming grizzly murder, was back on the air. Only this time the show is different, like its advertising some combat show. Naturally the heroes are concerned about this and then watch to see if the program comes back.

Not only does it come back, the shows announcers boast that the heroes are the combatants who will be fighting on the program. All of them shaken by this, they meet up to plan out their course of action and decide to dive into the television to combat this head on. Much like when they are battling their own shadows of themselves, they are constantly challenged by each other and digging at their own weaknesses of their personality. Each person fights to solve the mystery of this ordeal and of themselves.

The Investigation Team

That make sense to anyone? No? Me either. You have a number options on how to play the game, I first took a crack at Arcade mode. I shouldn't have to explain what this is but its about 8 fights with other characters before you fight the final boss. The game actually has a number of cut scenes and conversations as you go through arcade mode which comes off as sort of an abridged version of the story. Simple enough and probably the mode you will get the most enjoyment out of.

But there is also a story mode as well where the game goes to its RPG roots and you can learn more about the character and what they did and or are doing after the events of Persona 4. You follow along with the characters and the events are all explained in greater detail. Many of the cut scenes are fully voice acted and are actually pretty well done. I was expecting some pretty hokey voice work but actually they are pretty well delivered and a lot of the exchanges are pretty funny. Even the new character, Labrys, has this very out of place Bostonian (Kansai) accent. But after one or two cut scenes, she had a charm about her that made me really enjoy the character. 

The problem with the story mode is the there is too much text. WAY too much text.  I know its supposed to be story mode but lets be realistic here: this is a one on one fighter, and people want to get to the fucking action. The first chapter of the character I played easily took almost 10 minutes to get through the many screens of text it contained and I didn't even get to friggen fight in that chapter. A lot of it repeats in some stories too and could be severely cut down some. I ended up skipping a lot of text as I did other characters because I've read similar stuff already.

I'm going to make my girlfriend (who doesn't exist) talk in a bostonian
accent just because of how Labrys talks. I'm so in love with her.

When I finally waded through enough bullshit to actually get to a fight, it ended in a single round. BIG mistake as far as I am concerned. If there is concern that the story mode might get boring, then taking away some of the length of time I get to play it is not going to help. Luckily, you can open an options setting in story mode to skip unseen text, although that kind of defeats the purpose. My only other complaint with story mode is the music, as it restarts from cut scene to cut scene. It wasn't bad at first but after 2 or 3 characters in story mode, a lot of it was starting to get very grating on me. In actual game play you don't notice it though. 

After that the game modes are the pretty traditional fighting game fan fare. The regular mainstays like score attack mode, training mode, challenge mode, and verses mode are all there. There is a gallery to view the artwork or hear the songs you've unlocked, but there doesn't appear to be much more in the way of innovation there. 

Small side note: Where the hell has survival mode gone? With the exception of the Dead or Alive series, survival modes seem to have disappeared from the fighting game scene. Which I feel is a damn shame because that's where I think you can best train your skill, with an ever depleting life bar and a nonstop onslaught of enemies. Please game devs, start bringing survival modes back.

So enough about that shit, How about the actual game play? Well, The similarities to the Arc Fighting System games are clearly there. Much like Guilty Gear's punch, kick, slash, hard slash button layout, P4A has a similar light, heavy, Persona light, Persona heavy set up that feels right at home. It features a burst gauge that acts just like it did in GG to break you out of a combo and to fill up your attack gauge.

Each character has a handful of special moves and one or two flashier specials, some of them which change or give you another if you are below 35% health. The one hit finishers are back but they can only be done in a match point round, and if your gauge is full to 100 or better, so you can't just spam kill it at the start of a match.

P4A boasts a combo feature to where if you keep hitting the light attack it will chain a few hits together that will lead into a special or two, finishing with a big persona finisher if your gauge is high enough. This can be seen two ways. On one hand its a great feature to pick up and play because it allows you to button mash your way in and allow you to pull off a stylish combo, but on the other it severely dumbs down the game somewhat.

I often found myself when using a character I was not familiar with to just charge in and keep smashing that button until the gauge filled up then again to end it with the persona move. There are more detailed combos to learn, but I think the game would have been suited to have more specials for each character and more intricacy to performing combos.

Sigh, and then there is verses mode. Seems simple enough, you make a quick profile for yourself, pick a character and off you go. But as you will see in the video below, you are ranked by performance and if you are so much as a letter off the opponent, chances are they will leave the room. God forbid you just started the game because then you are lumped in with the rabble and if people see that F sticking next to your name because you'll sooner be punted from the room than tarnish their immaculate records. It pisses me off because how else are new players supposed to improve their rank if more seasoned players refuse to let them play?

My guess is the penalties for losing to someone with a lower rank than you are more severe than if you were to lose to someone with an equal or better rank. Still, it's fuck'n annoying because I have people rage quitting on me before we even get to start the match. That being said, what I did get to play seems to be pretty well balanced. I never seem to be get crushed as bad as I did in Streetfighter X Tekken. And using that burst gauge to smash your way out of combo's is something every new player should learn to do immediately.

I do feel for a game that has such a big universe, there could be a lot more characters to choose from. It boasts a modest number of 13 (one of which is the same character, with a different persona), but since this game is based off 4 different RPGs I felt like it could have a much bigger cast. They are probably withholding characters for if they get to produce a sequel.

The other problem is unlike games such as Guilty Gear, Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter the characters while they play very different from one another, their overall design is kind of boring. Most of them are school kids, so their outfits are just bland and kinda meh. Teddie stands out greatly as a non human creature and the characters from Persona 3 have interesting and different looks about them, but on the whole the cast could be more diverse.

Not a bad amount of characters for a first game, but could definitely use more.

All in all, for a first foray into the fighting game genre, I would say that Persona 4 Arena comes in rather competently. Its made an older franchise new by switching formats, yet still feels familiar which allows it to work as a strength as it caters to both the seasoned fighter and the new player. It takes a bit of risk with the story mode to incorporate some of the RPG aspect its known for, but while not perfectly executed it does enough to make me love the cast and want to go back and play the original Persona 4 title.

If this isn't going to be the only title in the Persona Arena series then it's laid down a solid foundation for future releases. Its a fast and frantic fighter that provides another new option to the hadoken spammed playing field we are all used to. I am having fun with this game and if you enjoy fighting games, I think you will too.

Now if we can just bring back Killer Instinct, I'll be all set.

Rage Quitter Omniderp: #1

Don't have much to write about lately, so I whipped up this vid for you. Enjoy

My Rebuilding Silent Hill article.

Valkyria Chronicles (PS3): You pricks probably missed this one.

Since I have fuck all to review at the moment and those that I could review I'll probably do in an omniderp video,  I wanted to take a moment to talk about what I feel is one of the most underrated gems on the PS3. When I first saw this games title I was crossing my fingers for Norse mythology. No such luck, it ended up being what looked like 3rd person WWII shooter, so needless to say I wasn't too interested. But when it came out I still gave it the benefit of a try and ended up finding one of the most interesting hybrids of a genre I've played to date.

VALKYRIA CHRONICLES: (PS3)

I usually take a paragraph to break down the story here, but it seems kinda pointless in this case. The game is an unabashed parody of world war 2. It takes place on the continent of Europa (whoa-ho, clever) where the Eastern Imperial Alliance (Read: Nazi alliance) and the Western Atlantic Federation (Read: Allied forces) are currently engaged in a struggle for a multipurpose mineral called ragnite (Read: petroleum) which is the resource that both are highly dependent on. The Empire being one for massive military strength easily pushes the Federation on the defensive and while it continues to sweep, it lays its sights on the neutral country of Gallia to gain control of their rich deposits of ragnite.

At this time Welkin Gunther, son of established war hero Belgen Gunther and our games protagonist, is returning home from a university stay with the intention of helping his sister move and dreams of becoming a teacher. But on his way home he is stopped and interrogated by Alicia Melchiott and the town watch because of the Empire invaders have put the city on edge. Upon finding from Welkin's adopted Darcsen (Read: jewish) sister Isara he is released. The town is quickly invaded by the empire and Welkin, Alicia, and Isara are able to defend their town thanks to some smart tactics from Welkin and the use of his fathers tank.

The Trio goes to the Gallian capital and join up with the militia. Welkin is promoted to lieutenant and Alicia  as his sergeant (because apparently if you bring your own tank you just mark off what rank you want when you sign up), to lead squad 7. Tensions start high as his squad doesn't trust Welkin because of  his lack of experience nor do they trust each other because of the tension between the Darcsen and Gallians. From here we begin the campaign against the empire.

Alicia and Welkin start off rough, but they quickly get very close.

So right out the gate, lets get my one major complaint out of the way. In between each mission it brings you to a book style menu that operates as your main base of operations. From here you can level up your characters, see past cut scenes, develop new gear for your tank and soldiers, you can play previous missions, adjusts the options and of course, proceed with the game. It has a cool visual look to it but the main problem is it is incredibly clunky. Transitioning from one menu to another is not smooth, it takes too many buttons, and  it takes too long to get from menu to game.

Even more annoyingly is that you have to come through here after every single cut scene. So every time you finish a little exchange of dialog you have to go back to this screen, move to the next cut scene and be asked if you want to proceed. Of course I want to proceed, I have to in order to keep playing! Here is what should have happened: It goes through all the necessary talk and cut scene between missions, and before the mission starts bring me to this book so I can level up my team and items and then save, then play the mission. If I want to see the old stuff I will go back for it.

Too much shit. Why do I have to bother with this so much! Let me play the stupid game!

Now then. As I mentioned in my intro, this game is basically an interesting hybrid of a couple of different styles of games. At the beginning of each mission the captain will brief you on the objectives and some of the risks or assets of the terrain. From there you organize your team of your one tank, fast moving and long firing scouts and damage soaking/dealing shock troopers. There are also lancers which are your anti-tank rocket launching attackers, snipers, and engineers to fix the tank. but with the exception of one or two missions, these three classes are garbage because of their low movement and low accuracy. Most of the missions can be done with 2 scouts or a shock trooper.

After you select the team you have a overhead map with little icons representing each of the various job classes and you each select them one by one as if you are playing at tactics game. But after you select a unit, the game zooms in close and it becomes somewhat of a 3rd person shooter. You can move along the battlefield to your objectives or vantage points as long as your energy at the bottom is available. Enemies will remain still but they will shoot at you so you have to know where you want to move and when. You can't piddle around to think about it because if you are a scout or a sniper, you can bet your ass you will probably be shot down before long.

This mission is the games biggest headache.

You'll want to know exactly where you want to move, or your lifebar is gonna drop fast.

When you are done with your move you then can go into target mode. This zooms to a combo of the over the shoulder shooter or FPS where you can line up your reticule for a body or head shot. After you fire you can quickly end your turn or use any remaining movement you need. But whats cool is you can use that character again with a reduced movement as long as their ammo allows. This is what makes the scouts so useful, their long movement you can easily get like 3 or 4 moves out of them and if you get right up on your enemies you can head shot them at will or make a quick charge for the enemy camp.

After you take all your available moves you end your turn and the enemies make their moves. Remember the same rules apply so if you place your characters right, you can gun them down on their turn as they try to get into position. If anyone dies you have to touch their body before the enemy does. If you do they are evacuated, if they do they die and are gone for good.

Skirmish 4 is one of the best places to level. This isn't my video but it basically shows you how its done.
If you use the order "Caution" you take less damage from fire while moving. You can usually do it in like 4 moves.

This game has a beautiful art style about it. Yes its your basic anime character archetype but the animation is well done. But most notably about the art style is that is uses a particularly interesting style of coloring and shading. I hesitate to refer to it as "Cel-shading" because it doesn't have that same, overly saturated color kind of feeling that you see in games like Zelda: Wind Waker. Instead it looks like more like animation done with watercolors. The colors are vibrant without being overpowering, and all of the sound effects are represented with flashes of onomatopoeia for explosions, tank movement, and gunfire that produces this wonderful comic book effect that compliments the game perfectly.

The story isn't exactly revolutionary (ba-dum tiss), but it is interesting enough and characters are strong and likable to carry you through it. It does get a little ridiculous at points when the Valkyria are actually introduced but it wouldn't be an anime game if there wasn't somebody going over 9000 with blue energy and firing off energy blasts. My only real complaint is when you add in something supernatural to a fairly gritty realistic war story, it cheapens the effect a little. But all and all though the story is satisfying to play through and it will make you laugh or tug at a few heart strings and it does manage to provide and interesting twist or two.

The main characters, while they do find themselves in the pretty standard anime archetypes, is a generally fun and likable cast. The voice acting is done well enough to properly convey emotions and delivers proper pacing and reaction for scenes to keep the player engrossed. You get to watch the primary cast actually grow as a team and come together a bit, and for the most part all of the characters show a good amount of development as the story progresses.

But perhaps the most fun about the characters though, are all of the filler soldiers you use to update your squad. Pretty much from the start of the game you can organize a team of 20 troops to pick from in missions. Each of these characters have their own individual looks, cool little back story blurbs that give each of them a little bit of depth to their character. All of them are voice acted by different individuals so they each have their own nuances and charm about them (something Skyrim could fucking learn from, instead of having like 800 npcs and 5 voices between them).

They all have their own interesting quirks that affects their abilities in the field (Dallas is a lesbian and loves one of the protagonists so she swoons and gets accuracy boosts around her, Jann is gay for another protagonist and his dialog is hilarious.) some characters like to be in nature, some hate it. Some like to fight in a group, some would rather charge off on their own.

You could easily spend and hour or two just reading their all their back stories. Edy, one of more popular characters, is featured in two DLC expansions that give you additional missions to play featuring only side characters in the game, (which came out months AFTER the game had been released, not before it. That's how DLC is supposed to work, assholes.) Also a pair of characters from Skies of Arcadia make an appearance in the game, as well.

Squad 7: Quite the ragtag band of heroes.

The soundtrack has a few memorable tunes about it, its done in a fairly conventional classical style. It plays a good compliment to the game and is used properly. In bigger battles there will be a epic sounding theme on your turns which raise the tensions, while on some of the stealth missions there is virtually no music and you can only hear the chirping of crickets or the sound of grass underfoot. It does exactly what it needs to compliment the mission at hand.

You would be advised to save your game before each mission. Some of them can drag out for quite a while and if you don't have the right team, you are fucked from the start. There is a boss battle midway that pretty much forces you to fit as many lancers as you can fit on the team. But up until that point, if you play like I do, you didn't even need one. So it can be annoying to play for 35 minutes to realize "Well shit, there is literally NOTHING I can do to win this mission." It can sometimes be trial and error, but it doesn't happen often enough to want to stop playing.

Selvaria Bles. If she's on the battle field, you run.

Here is my big tip, level your scouts first and your shock troopers second, maybe a few for your lancers. Everything else virtually doesn't matter. Almost every single mission can be completed inside of a turn or two depending on how well you move and shoot key soldiers. As you beat levels you will re-unlock old missions in skirmish mode to play to grind classes. Once the scouts get their grenade launcher, you can pretty much take out everything in a hit or two.

The rewards for finishing the mission with an A class are better than a worse ranking and killing everything. Some of the best scouts for the job are Alicia, Juno, and Aika because all of them aside from being scouts at higher level can get the double movement ability. If that happens to trigger you can walk nearly the whole length of a stage if you can avoid fire.

I really don't know what else I can say about this game. It will kill 20-50 hours depending on if you want to grind your classes to maximum potential but you don't really need to to complete the game, and there are a handful of DLC stories to get you a little extra play out of it and lets you learn more about all the filler characters.

There is a sequel for it on the PSP (boo) and it has a 26 episode anime series so if you are torrent savvy you can get a fan sub of that. The story is twisted a little differently so its not a retread of what you played and some of the characters are played differently, so that keeps it fresh and new. The game is just good all around and has a very original style about it. Its pretty inexpensive now too, so if you manage to find a copy I highly recommend it.

Or you can just ignore me like everyone else did when this was released, but that'd make you an asshole.

Don't be an asshole.