Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale (PS3): Super Sony Brothers Brawl

My disconnection with Nintendo is pretty well documented at this point. Just after the SNES they really started to let me down on a pretty consistent basis. I'd get a few things I'd really like but for the most part I bought all that much. But one game that would sort of bring me back was Smash Brothers. I didn't own it or often play it, but I'll be fucking damned if my friends are going to be better than me at a game. So I got good with one or 2 characters and if a friend fired it up I wouldn't be totally lost.

So I had to laugh when Sony decided to throw their hat in the ring with, let's be honest, a complete knock off of the concept so long after Smash Brothers had already become the standard. Reviews were lukewarm, the price kept dropping, but I never bit on this one. I don't have friends over so it never seemed worth it. But it finally got marked as a PSN freebie so might as well download it to see what it has to offer.

PLAYSTATION ALL-STARS BATTLE ROYALE

As you might expect, this game doesn't have much of a story. Games that tend to be mash-ups usually don't and when they do they are typically pretty abysmal, (honestly Cross Edge still gives me nightmares). But to best summarize the stories of the game, you basically get a miniature telling of the story or something akin to it from the protagonist of that game. So when I first fired the game up I instantly gravitated to Nariko of Heavenly Sword.

She gives a small monologue and some stills of introspection about her and the power of the Heavenly Sword, much like she did in between the chapters of the actual game.  It runs for about a minute or two and then plunks you right into the game. You get an animated cutscene between her and another character near the end of the game (in my case, Dante from DmC: Devil May Cry {which confused me, Kratos would have made more sense.}). After which you fight some floating digital head things for a final boss, which rings a little familiar to Smash Brothers giant hand. The closing is a few more stills and another monologue. It's nothing flashy but I suppose it works.

Sorry longtime DMC fans. It's the skinny andro-prettyboy Dante.

I was curious to see if this was the norm for the game's standard, so I fired up a 2nd game this time picked Nathan Drake of Uncharted. Much like the previous playthough, I was treated to a handful of stills of Drake and Sully sitting at a table on a beach discussing a map that Drake has found, and that how a map this detailed has to lead to something. I'm curious how that will work for characters like the Big Daddy or Sackboy, but I guess to give the single player mode some substance it works.

I guess the first thing that I noted about the game is how......unpolished, it felt. The opening menu is just a flat background with some menu options. It's functional, but boring. The music that plays during the menu also just felt kind of uninspired and generic. I don't think I could hum the Smash Bros. menu to use, but I know it has a very boisterous and dramatic feel to it, and it's notable enough that I distinctly remember it. Even the character select menu has a boredom about it. Two lines of portraits with a bigger selected one on the bottom. Again, it's functional but lacking a bit of pizzazz.

Not a whole lot to it.

Then we have the actual game, and it functions in that same kind of platform fightery way you would come to expect. You are placed on some notable level from the of the character's respective games and you are to duke it out with one to three other characters on screen at any given time. The story mode seems to be the same each time so it usually opens up with Chop-Chop Master Onionhead's dojo from Parappa the Rapper. This will eventually fall apart to have I believe a metal gear firing rockets at you from the distance. 

This brought me to my next point of contention. The controls of the game felt very loose, nothing ever seem to react for me as immediately as I wanted it to. Now, this might be something that is kind of the norm for Smash Bros. players, but it never felt right to me. I assume the control schemes are similar: You have three attack buttons and jump button, each of them providing different attacks depending on the direction you are pressing when you attack, and item to pick up items, and your "super" button. 

How the game works differently to Smash Bros is in Playstation All-Stars is you don't have the running percentage of damage taken. In this, the more damaging your attacks are the faster it fills up your super gauge. You can still score kills for knocking somebody off the stage, but the fastest way to do so is to rack up specialty kills. Admittedly, this takes away some of the feeling of danger and might make you more likely to dive headfirst into combat because if nobody has a super charged, you are not in a lot of danger to be killed.

To give you context, I started playing my story mode with Nariko and much like her original game, the Heavenly Sword breaks apart for fast chain blade combos. So it was very easy to wailing on the square button and let her start to liquefy anything in her path. But these are light attacks so my little gauge would bump up in increments to 5 or 7. If I ventured over to the other buttons they would do slightly more damage depending on the move.

By concept alone, some characters are just more fun to play than others.

Once I would hit one full bar, I could trigger a special where Nariko summons Kai and blows up a barrel. If enemies are caught in the blast I am awarded a kill. At level 2, Nariko produces a cannon like on the castle battlements and can fire off shots at the other players. The aim is minimal but you get a few shots and any that connect score a kill. At level 3, gets that heavenly glow, and her chains extend to full range and enemies who are caught are quickly ended.

It was an interesting way to try to have the same feel of a Smash game but without directly copying the system. The problem I have with it is I don't feel that it really emphasizes the tension you get when the battle sways. When you see that percentage staring to climb, you really get the weight that you can be blasted of at any moment. In Playstation All-Stars I might have occasionally checked to see if some else had a charge up. I barely touched the dodge/block button because I never saw the need to. I never had some eminent feeling of being threatened.

The only time things really kicked up was a later stage matchup where I noticed one of the computer players actually ringing up a number of kills, and there was concern that it might take the round. Due to some last minute heroics on a level 3 special I managed to pull that one away, but it was the only time in the entire play though where I felt things got a little a tense.

Is there no truly notable villain to be the final boss of this mess? Is just random
geometric face the best they can do? It's pointless and stupid. 

I think one of the other drawbacks to this title (and probably why it took so long for it to be produced) is the overall roster. Some of these characters make sense to me, but some of them don't. If we are looking at legitimate stars exclusive to the console, then guys like Nathan Drake, Kratos, or Jak & Daxter make sense. But people like Raiden, the Big Daddy, or Dante don't make sense to me because their games cross platform. Sure some got their start on PlayStation but hell, Bioshock came to the PS systems last.

And then you have the reaches, Kat from Gravity Rush was in a single game on a console that didn't sell well. Fat Princess you play a character who is ultimately nonfunctional in her own series and is more or less offensive to an entire gender. I would argue that Cole McGrath from Infamous absolutely deserves to be in this lineup, but putting in both an evil and good version of him feels like you are padding out space because you just don't have enough "branded" characters to put in the game. Although in Sony's defense, Nintendo has pulled this shit too. (Looking at you Star Wolf and Lucas). The bottom line here that Sony doesn't really have enough independent notable properties to really flesh out a roster like this.

This roster forced me to give credit to Nintendo. They may just put out the same few
games every year, but they managed to flesh out a pretty meaty roster for Smash.

There are a smattering of other game modes such as a training mode, a challenge mode, and naturally a multiplayer mode. None of them are remarkable or interesting enough to even bother to comment on other than "hey look, there they are"

I'll give credit that the alternate costumes are kind of cool. I don't know why but I have always been a fan of alternate costumes in games and love to try to unlock them, but absolutely started to loathe it once they started putting DLC tags on them. They really should be rewards, not costly extras.

Ultimately, Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale pretty much was exactly as I expected it to be: a flat, uninspired knock off of an immensely popular game that has been done already more competently in previous installments. I'd be hard pressed to say it's a bad game because it's at the very least functional, but I personally didn't have much fun with it. Maybe I would enjoy it more if I played it with friends but I honestly don't think it will be in my memory enough to even bother to try it.

The game is currently free on PSN for PS+ users and I've seen it for 20 bucks otherwise. If you need to get Smash out of your system without owning a Nintendo console this is probably a reasonable sub, but honestly I wouldn't blame you for skipping this one. Free was fine, I wouldn't pay 20 for this.

Bravely Default: Remember when JRPGs were great? Square Remembers

So I mentioned this one in a review a few weeks back. I had my big summer vacation planned for this year to travel down to Austin for RTX. At this point in my life I consider myself to be a fairly seasoned con-goer. I've got a number of ohayocons under my belt, and have also been to a very crowded PAX East. So I knew two things for sure going in. I knew I would have some long travel ahead, and I knew I'd be spending time in line.

I sort of fell out of touch with handheld gaming for a while. Have a wave 1 DS Lite and a launch PSP. They pretty much provided all I needed in the way of handheld gaming. But as new iterations of handhelds came out, close to my trip I started hearing rumblings of a off shot game put out by Square Enix that took the world by surprise. It being heralded it as the Final Fantasy game we've all been waiting for. Well, hearing things like that piqued my interest. So after years of not using handhelds, I caved and got a 3DS specifically to play...

BRAVELY DEFAULT:(3DS)

The tale of Bravely Default weaves together the travels of four characters from across Luxendarc. Our main protagonist Agnes is a vestal to the crystal of wind, seeking to restore the power of the crystals in the hopes of stopping the decline of the world. Tiz, a country bumpkin who sees his whole village swallowed up by a massive sinkhole resulting from the decline of the crystals power. Ringabel, our resident womanizing amnesiac (who is a total douche in my opinion). And finally Edea, The daughter of the Grand Marshall of the Duchy of Eternia. 

Despite the 4 of them each having a difference of beginnings, they all end up walking along the same path. They travel across Luxendarc to each of the realms crystals in the hopes of reactivating their power, and hopefully restoring balance to the world. But the Duchy of Eternia sees the dependency of the crystals as a curse, and are out to stop Agnes in her quest. 

Ringabel, Agnes, Tiz, and Edea 

This is another one of those stories I kind of had to gloss over for the intro paragraphs because I don't really want to play spoiler. But did any of those story elements kinda stick out in your head? Four different crystals across the world corresponding to the for cardinal elements? A world in decline because of the crystals power? A warring empire looking to control the crystals? A ragtag band of hero's with at least one or more nobles? This is Final Fantasy 101, and has basically been the stories of FF's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, and to a lesser degree 12. So anyone who's familiar with classic Final Fantasy is going to find these story elements pretty familiar.

But that isn't the only thing that rings familiar. Although all the character models and designs are original to the game, but if you ever played the Final Fantasy III or IV remakes on the DS, you'll note that the visual style of the characters looks remarkably familiar to those iterations. But I mean, alright, maybe it uses the same artists, and stories are kinda similar, and they came from the same company. That doesn't mean they are same thing, right?

Normally I would agree, but those are not the only comparisons. All of the spell names are practically the same from their FF counterparts, It functions with pretty much the exact same job system (at least that I remember) from Final Fantasy 3 and 5. Jobs that similarly to previous FF games had and many of them with the same names and features, nearly every aspect of this game calls back to those classic JRPGs from the NES and SNES eras, and I honestly couldn't be happier about it.

While I'm never crazy about the Knight class, 2 handing a weapon does big damage
And is a handy skill to unlock early. I find big damage is better than the shield defense.

The battle system of this game also remains classic, but has some of its own tricks to make it original. Namely, the Brave and Default system. These really are clever names for point system. Each round, a character and enemy gets one action a turn, and when you use an action, it spends that point. Simple right? However, you can choose to default (ie: defend) for a round. You take reduced damage but you store up a battle point when you do so. you can store them up to 3.

Once you are ready to really go on the offensive you can "brave" to spend these additional points and have that character take an additional turn. so with a full stack of points, you can unload up to 4 attacks with each character (since you can dip into the negatives when you brave). So on certain bosses, you can really fire off a massive assault for big damage. Or, if you are confident you can win quickly, you can brave 4 times and bring yourself down to -3 or -4 at the end of the turn. This is a gamble though since if you don't kill off all the baddies you are then vulnerable for 3 or 4 rounds of attacks.

And this game will quickly, and I mean QUICKLY, let you know this isn't baby's first JRPG. I am barely halfway though the game and the bosses I have encountered very quickly let me know that haphazard strategy will result in a game over screen. So for most of the regular battles you can tear through fine, but you definitely need to use the Brave and Default system smartly if you are going to beat this game.

You also have conditions for special moves you can do that hinge on the weapon type you are currently using. If you fulfill them, it allows you to fire off a special for big damage. They also can be customized to be more effective on a specific enemy type, elemental, and inflict status effects. On top of that, while that characters theme is playing, the party receives bonus effects as well, so a well placed special with a stockpile of BP can quickly turn the tide of battle.

There are a bunch wonderful additions that I love and wish Square Enix would have incorporated sooner and in more of their games. One is the classic auto-fight. I love this feature because it basically remembers the last set of actions you used for that character so if you are in an area with certain baddies you and set your attacks properly with the proper amount of braves, tap Y to go into auto, and then just walk the world map and the game will take care of those for you. Its better than Normal because usually auto-fight is just physical attacks. Setting up to remember specific actions makes clearing out randoms simple.

It also doesn't need to be an arduous process either, because if you tap left or right on the d-pad, you can increase or decrease the speed of the battle. So if you are traveling to a specific point and wanna save time, you can just set the battle speed to highest and have your auto fight commands set, and the tedious random battles can be over in a flash. Excellent feature and I wish this was standard in JRPGs.

But what if we step into a cave and half way through we find out we are not ready for it?. We clearly don't want to die but have no teleport stones (which you should, you flippin idiot)? No problem. In the configure menus, you can also set the likelihood of getting into random battles by increments of 50%. So you can adjust it to have half the battles happen, or even none (but you gain no EXP that way). Inversely, say you want to grind some fights to get more xp or increase your job ranks. All you have to do is crank the encounter rate up to 100% extra and you will be in a fight every few steps. This is incredibly handy.

The game has a pretty awesome soundtrack as well. This was one of the things I would see articles often brag about when they wrote about the game. It didn't take me long to see why. I don't know exactly how long ago this started but its becoming common enough in RPGs that I've noticed it as a trend, but a lot of games seem to be blending the classical sounding style you usually hear in a game like this, and mixing it with contemporary rock. The results are exceptional and they really help sell the battle. I've seen Final Fantasy and the Atelier series do this, and frankly I hope this becomes standard practice. It's fantastic.

Now as I tend to say, no game ever manages to get a perfect score from me and even those who make an outstanding case are no exception to the rule. This includes Bravely Default.  As I have previously mentioned, there are points in the game where the difficulty really ratchets up. Normally I am ok with a steeper difficulty curve, but there are points in this game where it feels the boss for an area is grossly overpowered to the baddies I have been thrashing going up to it.

On more than one occasion if not every other dungeon, I will be happily tromping my way through a dungeon mashing through all the fodder baddies it throws at me. I get the end of the dungeon where I get treated a cutscene (typically featuring Edea or Agnes yelling at someone), boss fight starts and inside of 3 or 4 rounds of combat I get completely steamrolled. Even at max level, there are bosses who just wail on me. It can be frustrating and it sort of messes up the difficulty curve. I'm told it gets murderous on difficulties higher than normal but I haven't gone higher yet. But the fact that I'm at level 99 and still getting creamed by bosses on normal says something

While I love the music in this game, the voice acting I am a little more meh about. I try to be objective when I first hear character voices, because sometimes they start off wonky and get better. There are lots of examples of this: Any Star Ocean game, Infinite Undiscovery, a handful of Tales characters, Blue Dragon, and the list goes on. While on the whole I like the voices of these characters, when Edea or Agnes gets worked up it makes me wince a bit. I've gotten more used to them as the game went on. Few games have 100% peerless voice acting, so this one doesn't rub me too badly.

But since I'm on the topic of characters, Ringabel and Tiz suck. I'm only in chapter 6 or 7 or so at time but so far neither of them have once had the slightest bit of interesting dialog to me. Tiz has a very powerful beginning that sort of starts him on the hero's quest but then immediately takes a backseat to the girls, who have actual important shit going on like saving the world from destruction, or committing high treason to your country. I guess his kind of generic facade is meant to be so the player projects themselves to him, but honestly I didn't feel it, nor have I cared yet.

Ringabel is a womanizing amnesiac: Fucking, Snore. Its been done a million times, and does nothing to make me care about that character.  The story finally seems to be starting to address who he is, but by this point I already don't care. Trying not to play the spoiler here but when certain events within the world start to take place, it starts to paint a pretty clear picture about who he is/used to be. So when he finally made the big reveal, it was promptly met with a "yeah no shit, I figured that out already when you SHOWED ME 10 hours before".

Then there really has been an annoying vagueness to the motivations of the antagonists too as I play this game. To unlock each of the jobs, you fight a respective boss with that job. And a lot of the pre fight conversations are "We need to stop the wind vestal, she'll {Do this/Cause this}" to which the heroes defiantly ask what they mean by that, and then all of them just respond by saying they are children or the don't understand. No fucking shit assholes, that's why we keep asking what the fuck is going on! But to make matters worse, not only do you have to refight the bosses at some point, but the game is now making me do it TWICE and seems to make me do it again, and I'm still not learning anything.

Now I heard the back half of the game can be grindy, but this is just ridiculous. Even with max level and encounters turned off, I still find myself getting bored retracing my steps a 3rd time to refight the bosses I've already done twice already. I hope the story payoff gets better because right now its taking a lot of wind out of my sails, and sadly when that happens, I put games down. Thankfully, while the grind is getting irritating, the end of the story is in sight so hopefully I can push through it.

I appreciate that there are a lot of different job options to pick from in the game, it just would have been nice if any of them were worth a shit. Oh sure, a lot of them sound really interesting in concept but after a while, like most job systems, I find myself just relegating to the regular heavy hitting classes and maybe a healer. between a dual wielding swordmaster (read samurai), pirate, valkyrie and a magic user with white magic, everything else ends up being next to use useless. Equip everything with Dual Wield, Multi-task, and Acrobatics, and your three physical fighters can mow down groups with crescent moon, or wail on a single target with 4 braves and 8+ attacks for massive damage.  Salve-Maker? Pfft, not in this lifetime.

Lastly, is the insane price of the bonus items you get from the street pass feature. You can rebuild the town destroyed at the beginning of the game, and the way you do that is by collecting street passes and then putting those people to work to unlock things over time. I was fortunate enough to be at a gamer and Internet convention, so I racked up 400+ passes pretty easily. But that still doesn't change that some of the items (such as the gold and growth eggs for grinding) cost like 2 and 5 million respectively. Once you get them farming is a snap but its still highly annoying to get to that stage to start.

Now, a lot of these seem like nitpicks and maybe they are, but I will say it hasn't deterred me from trying to finish this game yet. Reviews weren't kidding, Bravely Default truly is a Final Fantasy title in all but name. And not this Final Fantasy XIII cyber-punk emotionally stoic garbage we've been being shoveled into our faces for the past five years. No, this is straight up SNES/PS1 quality JRPG classic and god am I glad to see it. And I am not the only one either, the world was happy to see it as marked by its sales numbers.

The others who were happy were the people at Square-Enix, who seemed absolutely befuddled by the success of this game. Even to the point where they openly said "huh, we didn't think the rest of the world liked JRPGS." You colossal fucking idiots. YOU BUILT YOUR FUCKING EMPIRE ON JRPGS, OF COURSE PEOPLE LIKE THEM. So now Squeenix is reevaluating their direction and appear to be going back to what they do best and that is a good thing for gamers like me. (Hopefully Sega takes the hint and localizes the last fucking Yakuza games already.)

Believe the hype on this one. Bravely Default was everything I wanted it to be. It certainly has some faults and didn't merit paying for an entirely new system for just one game, but it did motivate me enough to get back into the handheld market. I've got 70+ logged in the game already and still have a good portion of the game to go. At time of writing I am currently in chapter 7 and I think I am making my final push to the end. Here's hoping this marks the start of a long and successful new IP, even if its walking the path of its predecessor to the letter. Highly Recommended.

See Legend of Zelda series? You can make a game identical to what you are and call it something different, and it feels new. Mix shit up a bit.

Parasite Eve: Mitochondrially Mighty.

I don't usually go back and do really OLD games for my reviews. I had my Silent Hill introspective over at hashtagnerd.com but that's because Silent Hill is still somewhat relevant and is very significant to me as a gamer. I went back and covered Muramasa and Valkyria Chronicles but those were still on current gen systems at the time. But during the last winter prior to my releases for the spring, I have been dusting off some of my old PS1 games.

One of them always kinda stood out to me. It was one that was really original in concept and at the time a big departure from Square's usual style of games. Before they really started cranking out CGI out the anus they really had a solid philosophy for their JRPGs that were producing some classic titles. Square was riding high on big releases such as Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy Tactics.  But in 1998, they released what ended up being one my first action-rpgs that I can remember playing.

PARASITE EVE:(PS1)

The story takes place with NYPD rookie Aya Brea (*swoon*) stepping out of a car at Carnegie Hall for a evening of opera on a Christmas eve date she really doesn't want to be on. Trying to make the best of it she takes her seat and the show begins. 

As the show proceeds, Aya meets the gaze of the lead singer Melissa Pearce, and suddenly the people in the audience begin to spontaneously combust. As people start to burst into flames and flee the burning building, only Aya and Melissa are unaffected. Aya charges the stage gun drawn, but Melissa only responds that Aya's mitochondria need time to awaken and flees. Aya pursues her down to the sewers where Melissa mutates into a horrible monster, and dubs herself reborn as Eve before she escapes.

The following day, Aya informs her superiors at the police station to try to explain what went down, and they are naturally at a loss. But as the day progresses they find out Eve is moving towards a crowd assembling at central park, and Aya moves in to hopefully stop another catastrophe.

So as we can clearly see, this game is a bit of a soft science nightmare. But interestingly enough, it is slightly based on a bit of truth. Mitochondria are a legitimate organism that lives within the human body, and they do generate heat energy much in the same fashion as the game describes, although not to the point of spontaneous combustion. I thought that was sort of interesting.

Although this game is technically the first in the series, its actually a sequel to the Japanese book/movie that came before it. While its been a while since I have actually watched the film and played this game, I believe there is a point in the game where the Japanese event is referenced within the story. So this is a cool little piece where all the elements related to it are all connected in one way or another.

So what is it about this specific game that I love? Well, in 1998 you can consider it to have a pretty progressive battle system for its time. Now, the loosely defined "Action-RPG" genre can be considered as far back as the early 80's for when it actually got its start. But I would definitely say that this specific title is one of the better examples of that sub-genre. If anything, it tends to blend 3rd person shooter, JRPG, Survival Horror, and action together fairly well.

As you move through location to location in NYC, you will have many JRPG text exposition segments helping you move the story along. Once completed with that, you move to the next location or stage of the game (I'd say more comparative to an action game as once you beat an area, you can come back even through you don't really need to). In each location you'll have some story line related goal in order to proceed with the story: Find this person, fight this boss, get this item, etc etc.

At least traveling from location to location is fast.

The combat though is definitely its biggest seller for me. As you wander through the maps you will have random encounters JRPG style where mitochondria monsters appear. There isn't a screen transition so you have to use the map you are on, which means the obstacles that are in place (chairs, tables, counters, etc). You have a freedom of movement and to a degree the battle is active. So you will want to try to keep your distance from the enemies at hand to avoid taking hits, although their range varies depending on monster.

When you go to attack, the combat freezes and a wire-frame dome appears around you. This represents the range of the gun you are using. As long as the dome reaches the enemy, its almost always going to be a hit, if they fall outside of the dome you can still hit, but there is a chance the shots will miss.

You usually have a varied weapons at your disposal like pistols, shot guns, machine guns, tonfas (batons), and at one point a rocket launcher. All of them have varied ranges and abilities, and different degrees of customization. To be 100% honest though, There really is no reason to use anything but the pistols. They have the best ability to customize, decent range, decent rate of fire, decent power. Once you collect enough junk (literally 300 pieces of it) to make a top tier weapon, you basically can customize the best pistol with the right status effects to basically rip enemies asunder.

But it wouldn't be a Squaresoft game if there wasn't some RPG in there. Because of Aya's resistant mitochondria, she also has some special abilities. Most of them play into idea that her mitochondria are self sustaining, so many of them are curative. Abilities to heal, remove poison or ill effects, speed her self up or slow enemies down. She does get one attack ability where you can fire an energy shot, but after a story segment and boss fight you get Liberate, which allows Aya to transform and do massive damage to everything. I actually kind of prefer the ability imbalance because it allows me to focus on boosting a specific weapon type.

The game has got a pretty decent soundtrack to it too. Its a blend of rock and techno to its more notable themes, which I think is an appropriate fit. The game has more of an action bent with horror elements, so I feel the rock complements that well. Yet we are knee deep in soft science, so the techno feels right at home in those moments. Both tend to get more slow and melodic for exposition moments. Aside from the main theme I don't think I could hum any of for you, but the whole thing just feels... I dunno, right?

This is also one of those games where CGI kinda blew me out of the water. While the models for the human felt a bit anime inspired, the monster transformations were pretty bad ass. I remember my jaw hitting the floor as that first rat mutated into a monster. By today's standards it may be a bit hokey, but for its time I can't think of another game that would have such detailed and grotesque mutations. I remember that this actually caused a bit of a stir because although the ESRB were already in place and rating games, few pushed the envelope in such a manner. I think in terms of gore Resident Evil 1 and 2 were the only ones really on par at the time.

Some of the transformations can be pretty gross. Even for 98.

Its also a bit of time sink as well. While I wouldn't say this game runs as long as most RPGs do, there is a EX-mode after you complete it. This allows you to replay the game with the last weapon and armor you had completed the game with, and everything you had previously stored in your police locker will be there now. The big addition to the EX-mode is the Chrysler building. A 77 floor randomly generating endurance test that will take you to the games hardest boss and the true ending of the game. I couldn't complete it without a guide that had all the possible floor combinations, but I hold it as one of the most impressive notches in my gaming belt.

Now that's not to say that the game is without fault. As you know, I don't think its possible to really make a "perfect" game, and there are certainly some issues to address here. Most notably, and this truly is the games biggest handicap, is that the movement speed is HORRENDOUSLY bad. The walk speed is about as fast as a slug super glued to the floor and there are no moments of stealth in the game, so why even bother with the ability to walk. Get rid of it, its a waste of time.

And the run is really not all that much better. While the animation clearly shows me she is running and putting in the effort, I'm fairly certainly an elderly woman with a walker and two bad hips can blow past Aya in the heat of battle. It makes me fuckin crazy.

The story is another issue here. I have played the game a couple of times, and the story is really the biggest part of it. While its the main driving factor in a Square game, it really is a complete mess at times and there are still aspects of the story that I still don't understand. It falls under what I refer to as "Tales of the Abyss Syndrome". When you have a lore or mythos that is incredibly convoluted and complex, you are going to find yourself with no real easy way to tell it. Abyss would try to go through these huge detailed explanations of everything taking place, and there was so much reading it would feel like homework.

The original playstation didn't have that much space to work with, making explaining Parasite Eve's limited exposition that much more important. To a degree, I feel that it has never really explained all that well. Something about a Japanese scientist losing his wife in a car accident, and trying to sustain her life by culturing the liver cells, but mitochondria within them take over and give birth to Eve. And then there is something about Aya losing her mother and sister in a car accident, and the surgery to keep her alive afterwards has something to do with it. Eve wants to get knocked up to make an "ultimate being" to create a new race, but there is only one of them and everyone else has to die or something. I don't know how it can propagate.

Also, this is around 98. So the 3D graphics weren't exactly there yet. They were a step up from Final Fantasy 7's super blocky character models, but given how far graphics have come along, this game hasn't aged all that well. A little too new to look good like a retro game, and a bit too old to hold up to anything that's come after it. To the graphics whores, this could be a major sticking point to anyone looking to try it. It's right on the cusp of time that has the FF7 fans screaming for a graphical update.

I think one of the most interesting things about Parasite Eve though actually reflects its series as a whole. Parasite Eve is the only franchise I can think of where every installment of the game fell under a different genre of game type. Parasite Eve is very clearly an action-rpg with survival horror elements. Parasite Eve II takes a much sharper Survival Horror bent right down to the Resident Evil style tank controls, with a sprinkling of rpg elements. Nearly a decade later, 3rd Birthday (essentially Parasite Eve 3) came out as a 3rd person shooter, and much of the JRPG has been squeezed out of it. I can't think of another series that's gone this off road.

I just really like this game. I recommend it to everyone. If you missed this one the first time around, its really easy to get ahold of. Its in the the PSN store in its digital classics, and you can get the disc version on ebay for like 2 bucks used. It was a really a unique piece and an interesting part of game history in my book. I think its one of these things SquareEnix should sit down with for a few hours when they are reflecting on why their game sales are down. Go back to your classics, Learn your lesson.

If Squeenix fans are begging for remake of some of their older games, then this is one I put at the front of the line. Parasite Eve rules.

If Aya makes a Kingdom Hearts appearance, I am sold.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: A score of high notes.

So since February, I had paid for and been planning for a trip to RTX in Austin Texas. I had a lot of things I would like to do and places I wanted to visit, but having been to multiple Ohayocons and a PAX East, I feel I was somewhat prepared for what to expect. So despite the fun I was expecting, I knew there would be waiting in lines, and I knew there would be waiting at airports.

I have been eyeing Bravely Default for a while, and wanted to play it greatly, but I didn't want to start it before my trip. So I had this new 3DS XL and needed something to play on it. And then I remembered that trip to PAX east, I tried out an unreleased game by Square Enix. It mixed two things I liked, and seemed to be a good fit. But would it hold over? We shall see. 

THEATRHYTHM: FINAL FANTASY(3DS)

So yeah, story. This is a rhythm game so there really isn't one per say.  It would akin it sort of to Final Fantasy Dissidia: The world is in balance because of the two gods Cosmos and Chaos, and between them is rhythm, a crystal essence that controls music. Chaos as dispersed its power so Cosmos assembles heroes from the various Final Fantasy universes to collect Rhythmia to restore the crystals power.

And that's it. That is literally the entire extent of the story. And I suppose for a rhythm game that is all I can really expect. Dance Dance Revolution isn't exactly known for its stirring narrative. Bust a Groove never weaved an epic tale within the lyrics of the songs. Guitar Hero had a handful of cutscenes that were forgotten after about as long as it took to view them. So really, from a story perspective I got about what I expected out of this.

Not the cute chibi versions. Couldn't find a decent picture to use. Sue me.

No, Theatrhythm is about the celebration that is the Final Fantasy (FF) music catalog. And honesty I can't think of a better selection of soundtracks to make a rhythm game. I have spent many a workday at the various libraries I've worked at listening to Final Fantasy radio stations, as there practically isn't a bad song. I was very eager to jump headfirst into this one.

So the game starts off with a brief little prologue basically explaining the story as I just have, then it takes you to a screen where you assemble your FF dream team from a selection of one hero from each FF game. So naturally My team leader was quickly locked in as Terra from Final Fantasy VI (because 6 is best and if you disagree you are wrong, fuck you). I balanced out the rest of the team with a combination of Cloud, Tidus, and ugh... Lightning, because it provided me the most solid balance of stats across the board. Felt this was the best way to go because I really didn't know what to expect.

There are a few different game modes, but talking about one of them will really give you the biggest gist of the game. When you fire the game up, you can go to Series mode and how this works is you scroll through the list of the Final Fantasy Anthology going from one to thirteen. In it, you will play a simple prelude and epilogue song. These are optional but if you tap along with the beat you earn Rhythmia which is used to unlock things. Once done with that, you take on the 3 game types for that FF in no particular order.

Now the play is the same for all three, its just how they are delivered is what changes. So lets say I play Final Fantasy IV. I might start off with a Field Music Stage (FMS) and play "Terra's Theme", which is usually the overworld song. There is a circle which indicates where I hit the notes, and note icon's can be tapped, held, or swiped based on the direction of the arrow. It is pretty straight forward, but in FMS mode when you are holding a note, you might need to drag the circle up and down the line to maintain the critical rating (perfect). Sometimes you might have to swipe a direction at the end of a hold, but generally it follows a singular path. Of the three play styles, I find this one easiest.

Then you might move into "The Decisive Battle" in the Battle Music Stage (BMS). These are are the most fun to play because its where you are going to find all the fast, upbeat, and fun battle music from the FF universe. In this game mode, the note lines are broken up between the 4 heroes you have selected. the notes each fly at the hero and you need to tap, hold and swipe as they arrive. Essentially the same thing as the FMS but your eyes need to jump around the screen a bit more to keep up. These are my favorite songs to play.

Then we have the Event Music Stage (EMS) where you will be treated to a cinematic of CG animation or moments from the game while you try to play "Celes' Theme". I find this one to be tricky because besides things moving around in the background, instead of having the single line, the timing circle actually moves around the the screen along a singular path and you need to tap, hold, and swipe as it crosses the notes, and not vice versa. I find this to be the trickiest of the 3 game types because I never, EVER, can get the timing of the swipes down correctly and it only seems to get harder as the game gets faster.

I botch the arrows every time.

Once completed, you are treated to the game's ending theme where you can tap along as you did at the start. once you complete all five you total rythmia is tallied and added to your running total. In between the 3 major stages of the game you earn experience like you would a traditional final fantasy game and your characters level up and get increased stats and abilities. But what for? I'm glad you asked.

For the most part, the XP system seems to be fairly set with the exception of the BMS stages. In this mode, defeating monsters by performing the song well get you a pretty substantial boost of experience at the end of the level. As your characters grow stronger, they gain more HP to allow you to mess up more times during the song. Your increased stats also allow you to hit harder, which allows you to dispatch more enemies, thus allowing more experience to be earned.

And as you level, you unlock more abilities. Some of these are passive and take place within certain game modes, such as during the FMSs. Others are active, and are only triggered when certain stipulations take place such as hitting 20 goods on the tap icons, or when the 2nd monster comes out, or when you encounter a boss type monster. As you level up you get more Battle Points to allow you to equip better version of the abilities or more of them which eventually allows you dispatch even more. So naturally you want to use them, right?

Not so fast. Unfortunately using these items or abilities come at a cost, and if you are playing a music game, you will inevitably be a stickler for perfection. If you refuse to equip any items or abilities and go in equipped with nothing, this gives you a special stoic bonus at the end of each stage of like 200,000 points. You NEED these points if you intend to get an SS or SSS rank at the end of any stage you play. It is impossible to get higher than an S with items equipped, so equip or unequip accordingly for what it is you are trying finish.

Once you go through a round of those modes, you can play the songs again individually in the games challenge mode. This is typically where you will grind and play your favorite songs. But there is also a mode called Chaos Shrine, where you will play "dark notes" of the songs in the game. These are usually 2 different types of stages and the notes in the songs are switched up. They are usually harder, and the bosses in these areas drop better rewards, such as crystal shards. By collecting these you can unlock new characters from the various games, (I'm gunning for you Rydia). There is also a multiplayer mode but as we established: I have no friends and thus, didn't play that mode.

There are also songs to unlock as you play through, such as the "Blinded by the Light" from FF13 or "Dancing Mad" from FF6. This gives me a reason to keep playing so I am happy about that. There is also a large myriad of DLC songs to download for a buck a piece, but I intend to hold off on that since an updated release of this game will be coming out in September in Curtain Call.

The entire game is presented in this kind of cutesy chibi style of itself where all of the characters sort of resemble doll versions of themselves, or perhaps like the Tarutaru from Final Fantasy 11. It is a cutesy design and obviously because of the whole tone and theme of the game not meant to be taken seriously so it fits well. And it was cool to see some of the more notable baddies from the various universes all get a cartoony appearance in the BMS stages.

There really isn't a whole lot more that I can say about this. Its a music game that is functional, fun, and effective. It throws in some interesting RPG nuances that hearken back to the genre it draws from, it borrows hits from the incredible score from this timeless set of games with soon to be much more in the coming months. It's really turned out to be pretty much everything in wanted for a game of this kind.

Rydia would whip your fucking ass, Cloud. She didn't pussy ache about her
village getting destroyed nearly as long as you did. 

If I had to come up with complaints for it, I can only think of a few. One, the menus are kind of clunky an annoying. The entire game is navigated from the touch screen and nowhere else. which I guess is fine for play control, but when I am navigating the menus there should be no reason I couldn't move things along with the D-pad and the A buttons, that has been effective since video games. So I don't know why every time someone designs a new controller they need to fuck with what already works. Knock it off.

In addition to that, and I am not sure if this is a problem with my 3DS or the system as a whole, but the touch screen doesn't appear to be a sensitive as my original DS Lite was. I have only recently noticed it but if I barely tap the screen it doesn't seem like it registers as much as if I give it a more pressured tap. Not sure on that one. It might just be my system or something I just noticed but it hasn't really played a big factor until just recently.

And as I vented, DLC is like a buck a song and there is WELL over 50 different DLC songs that have come out, and additional characters as well. It sucks for the people who purchased this game at launch, I am fortunate because the better version will be coming out in a few months, just about after I start to complete this one so that is a pretty limited complaint to me.

As I have said previously before, when it comes to a new system I try to come up with at least 7 games that I know I would like to play before I buy them. And if I get a long play through out of them, then so much the better. When I was considered getting myself a 3DS, this was one of the first games that came to mind as a must have, if not top 3.

I am very happy to say that the game delivered on pretty much every front that I'm asking for. It may not have had every song I was looking to play but I haven't unlocked everything and I know I have about 100 more songs upcoming in the Theatrhythm: Curtain Call is sure to re-spark my interest in the game. But really? It was hard for me hate anything about this. It's Final Fantasy, it's a rhythm game, its pick up and play, its got great song selection, and its fun. I am doing a great job of raging on these blogs. >:|

6, 10, 4, 7, 9, Tactics, 1, 5, 10-2, 13-3, 8, Tactics advance, Mystic quest, 12, 13-2, 13, 3, and 2.

(of the ones I played, In that order.)

DmC Devil May Cry: Two giant steps sideways.

I've had this one on the shelf for maybe close to a year. I wasn't sure if I just sort of fell out with spectacle fighters, or maybe I just got tired with this franchise. I'm not really sure.  But when this game came out I didn't have the pressing need to pick it up at launch. LONG after its release I bought it on a buy 2 get 1 used special, it sat on the shelf turned sideways to let me know I hadn't finished it (or even started) but that still didn't press me.

To this day I don't know why I put it off so long but in the span before Watch Dogs came out I took that opportunity to just breeze through the game on easy mode so I can at least say that I completed the story mode. If anything it would give me a taste for the game and see the story. First game I've played on easy in a long while.

DmC: DEVIL MAY CRY

Explaining the story of these games is always a headache but I am going to give it a shot. The game takes place in modern day setting in a demon controlled city called Limbo City. It appears to be functioning just like a regular town does, but it is completely controlled and manipulated by a demon called Mundus, who's power reaches to control even the president. Using a drug laden soda (that might be a Futurama reference) or through the constant prattling of a political pundit (who should have just been Bill O'Reily playing himself for as thinly veiled it is) the denizens of the city live their lives in a semi brainwashed state, completely under his control.

Outside the skirts of the city lives a young delinquent named Dante. He's arrogant, brash, and is constantly being hassled by demons who rip him into a parallel plane of limbo and try to kill him. So needless to say he's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Dante is rudely awoken one morning by a young girl named Kat. She warns him of danger and pleads for him to come with her, to meet her boss. She works for a group called "The order" and their sole purpose is wrench humanity free from demon control. Aggravated by the hassle of demons, Dante begrudgingly follows along.

So yeah. He's got a little teen pop douche in him. But after a level or two?
I didn't even notice it anymore. New Dante is alright in my book.

So let's get this out of way so you can start flaming me. At first, I didn't much care for his look, but you know what? I like the new Dante. Yeah, he sort of has that shitty popular pretty boy look are you see in movies these days but its a small trade off from the "Oh yeah! Party time bro! DUUUUDE!" doofball Dante we have had for the past few games (3 was specifically the worst). Part of the reason I liked Devil May Cry 4 so much is because a majority of the time you play the game as Nero, and not Dante. Sorry people, but Dante has always been a bit of "Bro-ish" douchehole.

So now we have skinny androgen Twilight version of Dante, and things were not off on the right foot because quite literally the first scene you see him he's completely naked. Thankfully they don't show anything, but come the fuck on. But outside of that intro and his look (which after a while I didn't even notice) he feels like a very different character. There is definitely an edge of youthful angst to the character, and he does have a bit of young adult fiction character growth to him. Angsty but reluctant hero. A bit of dick through the game but as he gets to know Kat, becomes more of a supportive team player. After a few levels I found it really hard not to like the guy.

Kat is a bit different to most of the girls in the DMC series. She is smart and  resourceful,
 but isn't the over sexualized bad ass fighter girl. She has her tricks but is still vulnerable.

What I thought was interesting was the portrayal of Dante's brother Virgil through the game. If you have played through the series in any capacity you know that Virgil is the primary antagonist to Dante. Not in this game, as he is Kat's boss. So while you never play as Virgil he is very much alongside you for the game and it provided an interesting new dynamic to the character.

So this version of Devil May Cry I would say is broken up into two different styles of play: Classic DMC, and Platformy DMC. When you are running along the map, villains and baddies will eventually pop up and all you need to do is wail on them till they drop. I find Devil May Cry to be the standard for good spectacle fighter combat and this installment is no exception. Everything moves quickly and at a smooth pace without feeling overwhelming and too difficult to follow. Bayonetta had this problem where the combat would start to move faster than you could react adding unnecessary difficulty.

Air juggling with pistols is still as satisfying as ever.

Combos are relatively easy to pull off so it accommodates the masher and those who know when to pause in the combo to switch up the move set. They added a very nice gesture in this for this very purpose actually, after a certain move Dante will hold and ending pose. When he does there is a faint but noticeable glimmer on his weapon, this is your timer for the break in the combo. Once I realized that It was easy to keep my timing every time.

I would actually say that it is improved in comparison to previous Devil May Cry games because of how the weapon system works. You get your pistols and sword to start the game, but as you play through you start to allocate Angel and Demon weapons. Typically you will only use one of them but you do have a few options. As you fight, you will find enemies with certain guards or weaknesses, and if you use the back triggers, you can flip to your angel or demon weapon on the fly. Typically the Angel weapons are fast moving, high combo/low damage weapons, and the Demon weapons are slow but heavy damaging weapons used to punch through guards. Switching between them is relatively easy and fun to do.

I quickly fell in love with using the scythe.

What I didn't like about this is these also function as your grappling hooks. These can be used to rip away an enemy shield, pull them enemy closer to you, or pull yourself up to the enemy. In combat these work fine, not as seamless as they should have felt but functional. However, they are also used on these incredibly arbitrary platforming sections you will have to do on each level. It works for the most part, but this is kind of a double edged sword.

When Dante is pulled into limbo, the level design will alter around him ripping apart the floor, buildings, and warping all the surfaces around him to random floating platforms that you will have to navigate. To do this, you need to grapple yourself onto ledges so you can use the other grapple to yank things in place. There are also sections of maps in the level where you have to do this to cross great chasms so you have to do them in midair quickly.  For a while, this was actually a pretty cool visual effect.

But then I started to notice that I am doing sometimes 2 or 3 times in a single level, and then again during the boss fight. Now, Bayonetta did something similar because that had boss fights where they were roughly the size of a planet, so you needed to fly around the enemy to get to its respective weak points. In DmC it feels like you are really only doing it to dodge one specific attack. Maybe this plays more of a factor when you are playing it on a different difficulty, but for what I played all the platforming seemed incredibly arbitrary and unnecessary. I find the floating platform to be shorthand for sloppy level design.

Which is a shame because the the level design for a number of stages is very very cool. There is one specific example where you need to breach an enemy stronghold, but its not actually the tower, its the tower's reflection in the lake. So Dante jumps in and hits limbo skyrocketing upwards into a inverse world. It was a very cool effect. There are handful of stages where they get lazy sending you through corridors, but for the most part all of the non-platformy sections are very cool.

I just felt like I was always having to do this. Stop it. I play these games
to wail on monsters and keep them in the air with guns. 

But aside from thinking it's sloppy level design, it just feels boring to do. There are occasional stretches where you have to make multiple jumps and pulls before you actually hit the ground. They are tedious and annoying, they aren't fun, and they just waste your time. You could easily make me run along a path with a jump here and there for the same effect. But instead it adds pointless trial and error game play forcing me to backtrack when I mess up.

I have always liked the music in this series. Always had a very kinda hard rock/industrial kind of vibe to it. Although when the game started, in the intro credits it straight up said "Music by Combichrist". Now, this initially gave me a bit of a negative reaction because all I know of their music is when their drummer did a "DJ set" before a Rammstein concert I attended. It sucked, because it was basically shitty dance and dumbstep mixes of actually good Rammstein songs while he played with his Ipod, and then occasionally threw his hands up in the air. It was fucking retarded, and so are "DJ sets". (So you dumbstep fans can eat all the boners.)

Thankfully from what I've heard, Combichrist as an actual band falls in line with what I have accepted to be a traditional Devil May Cry ambiance if you will. That hard, aggressive industrial tone in the background as you are wailing on an enemy with an over sized sword. I don't know if any of their "hits" were actually in the soundtrack, but it certainly felt right at home, and has got me thinking I should probably give Combichrist proper an actual chance.

And hey! Boss fights! What an crazy novelty this game has created! I play through a level and fight some baddies, then I fight a really big boss at the end where I have to learn an attack pattern and then wail on the enemy when his weakness is exposed. Instead of just fighting wave after wave of the same fodder enemies I have been wailing on for the entirety of the game.  This was really neat, maybe other games might pick up with wild and crazy idea at some point? It certainly feels right at home here and I would love to see more of it. (Seriously game devs, what the fuck is your problem with boss fights? Thank you DmC.)

I like that I didn't feel forced to use certain weapons during boss fights

So here is the deal. Ultimately, this game is still just another Devil May Cry. The story is familiar but still manages to feel new to an extent. Even though it's not, the game can feel a bit like a prequel to the entire franchise as a whole. The new Dante is an interesting bent to the character and if you are willing to look past the new look (or happen to like it), the game feels like a reasonable installment to the series. I had my fun with it but it didn't knock my socks off, which really is status quo for the series. I'd place it in the middle of the pack. Didn't love it as much as Devil May Cry 1 or 4, but it is certainly better than 2 and 3 were.

It's just another fun romp with Devil May Cry.  I am very much glad I didn't pay the full 60 dollars for it because it would have left me with a lukewarm experience. But at the preowned price of less than 20 bucks it was absolute worth the amount of entertainment it gave me. Honestly this is probably a great place to stop with this property, because even with the new look this old dog is running out of new tricks.

Game is at the perfect price for it right now if you've never played it, but aside from a new look doesn't bring much else to the table. It's worth a play.