GameLight - Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2

Official Site: http://nisamerica.com/games/neptunia2/index.php

Source: Youtube Channel MyKOEITV

Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2 releases very soon (19 days to be exact).  It is a moé-animé heavy Action-RPG that seems to target a very specific audience of RPG players (more so outside of Japan).  I have kept an eye on the first game ever since its release but have been reluctant to purchase it as it had an average price of $60-$70 (some online stores sold it for $180) with an average Metascore of 45/100 from critics.  I eventually found a copy at GameStop for $30 (surprising since it's a new copy AND it's at GameStop) and decided to make the purchase.  Thankfully, the game turned out to be pretty entertaining (albeit the beginning tutorial, that was long and boring).  Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2 takes place in a fictional world called Gamindustri as did the first one.  CPUs are gaming consoles personified as goddesses and each goddess protects the part of the land within Gamindustri.  As one might guess, the game references the Game Industry quite often with certain lingo or specific game characters.  The game plays like a turn-based, dungeon crawler, RPG but looks a lot like a visual novel during conversations as dialogues stretch for quite a duration sometimes.  The turn-based combat in MK2 will differ a bit from the first one as characters can freely roam the battlefield similar to Star Ocean or Eternal Sonata.  And instead of 3 party members on the field, a maximum of 4 characters can participate in battle.  Each character has their own special abilities and the player can customize the different attacks to create their own combination of attacks.  I'm not certain whether there will be an open world to traverse or if it will be similar to the first one where the player chooses a dungeon to explore for each mission and quest.

It worries me that MK2 is rated "M" for mature when the first was rated "T" for teen.  The first game did have some risqué images and moments, so I can only imagine that MK2 has furthered the fan service a bit more.  The fan service neither really "adds" to the gameplay or nor "deter" it in any way, it's just there and so one can take it or leave it.  It can be troublesome if one plays the game when others around as some images and dialogue can raise quite a few eyebrows or raise the obvious question of "what in the world are you playing?"  So with that aside, it seems the game focuses on the "portable" systems of the game industry (namely the Sega GameGear, Sony PSP, and the Nintendo DS).  I really like the first one and I'm hoping the 2nd will be even better by fixing the problems the first one had (an more organized item menu system, faster-paced battles, etc.).  Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2 releases on February 28th, 2012 exclusively for the Playstation 3.

Retroview - Demon's Crest

Source: Youtube Channel LordTyphoon

 I remember being scared of this game when I was a kid, and for good reasons.  Look at those deep, rich and eerie backdrops drawn by the artists.  There is so much detail and mystery within the environment.  And just listen to that music:

Source: Youtube Channel 61u

It’s a simple melody, but is also entrancing and haunting.  The subtle nature of the music is truly atmospheric, completing the aesthetics of the game's world and environment.  You know why the music is so good?  Because it's by Toshihiko Horiyama, the same composer who has created incredible tracks for games like Megaman X1, X3, X4, Megaman 7, Megaman & Bass, Onimusha 2, and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.

 Demon's Crest is a far cry from its predecessors.  No longer will Firebrand be walking through boring towns with empty houses or running into random battles in a large empty map that's linear anyways.  No longer will Firebrand be subjected to flying for only 2 seconds or running errands having to go back and forth.  He will; however, still be slower than his enemies and have an ambiguous hit-box around spikes.  As you can see from the video above, Demon's Crest start off with a boss battle right from the get go and goes about his usual platforming.  After completing the first level, the player is presented with a world map.  BUT, you fly around instead of walking around AND the map is non-linear.  This means that the player can complete the levels in any order they wish rather than being subjected to a single path.  The way the map is presented reminds of Actraiser where the player hovers above and chooses a level to go into with a similar side-scroll platforming gameplay.  The archaic vial and lives system has been taken out entirely and the player can continue as many times as they want.  This, by no means, makes it any easier.  The level designs are challenging, but fair (much more fair compared to the first two games).  The bosses have diabolical movement patterns that's a lot harder to predict and can inflict quite a bit of damage if the player doesn't have certain items yet.  After about 2-3 hours of playing, I finished the game.  I was surprised to have reached the ending when I only had 20% of my items.  I realized that I had the most basic ending and that there was still about 60-70% of the game that I haven't played yet.  Many levels can be revisited several times over as multiple paths branch out into different areas.  Demon's Crest has a lot more abilities than the first two and requires a lot of switching between forms and abilities to get through some areas.  This was extremely bothersome in the first two Gargoyle's Quest and even more so this one as the pause screen would be an entirely different screen rather than a small sub menu on the bottom.  There are 5 abilities and 5 forms to choose from, and having to constantly “pause” the game to switch between them really broke the flow of the game.  Using the R and L shoulder keys would have been a great solution to switch between the abilities via a wheel selector or at the very least kind of like what Secret of Mana did for a menu.  Still, the transition between Gargoyle's Quest 2 and Demon's Crest is so significant that it's like a game of its own.  There's a lot of thought put into concept, level design, the aesthetics, and even the story is vastly different from the first two.  Demon's Crest is undoubtedly the best in the Gargoyle's series and is sadly underrated and forgotten by many SNES players.  After playing these three games, I find Firebrand to be a very enjoyable character to play in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.  I would recommend playing Demon's Crest out of the three.

Retroview - Gargoyle's Quest 2

Source: Youtube Channel nesguide

 So the day after I finished Gargoyle's Quest 1, I decided to play the 2nd one.  To be honest, I didn't know there was a second one.  I always thought Demon's Crest was the only sequel Gargoyle's Quest ever had.  Gargoyle's Quest 2 was developed on the NES and released two years after the first one.  To get straight to the point, I didn't like the sequel as much as the first one.  GQ2 had many similarities to the first one in gameplay, concept, and premise (story); however, the changes and "lack" of changes to problems from the first one made it less entertaining and more frustrating.  Instead of starting the combat immediately, the main protagonist Firebrand starts off in a town getting ready to be initiated as a warrior.  From there, problems already arise.  There are a lot of empty houses in the town and NPCs that block your path with their "randomly generated move sets."  Thankfully, two things also have been fixed and improved.  The text doesn’t move in an odd staccato of a pacing like the first one did and everyone speaks at a normal pace.  Also, Firebrand walks faster during the overhead view which is good for this game as I'll explain later.  I have to correct something I said about Gargoyle's Quest 1 on yesterday's post: after you lose all your lives, you just start from the level you had died on rather than the whole game over.  It's the same for GQ2 as well.  I guess I was complaining about that tid bid before since it felt like starting the whole game over when I was playing the first one as a kid (I never actually lost all my lives when playing GQ1 and 2 this past weekend, so I didn't know until I checked just now).  Now onto the actual game:

 The gameplay is essentially the same with platforming, flying, and shooting at enemies.  One surprising element they took out in GQ2 is the random enemy encounters in the open world map.  Instead, players choose to fight an enemy or not to receive vials to exchange for "lives."  If they were going to do that from the beginning, they should have made the world map smaller.  The world map is like a lot of the towns: empty and boring.  You'll walk around a lot with very little to do or fight.  This is why it’s good that Firebrand can walk faster now, because there’s really nothing to do on the world map.  What made walking around the world map in GQ1 scary is that you never know when you'll suddenly encounter a formidable foe that's going to eventually use up all your lives.  It had a "tension enticing" or "fear" factor into the world map.  But in GQ2, the world map was just there for the player to explore (sort of) and get from one place to another.  It was boring.  Level designs still had the same problem from the first ones in that you can really see what's up ahead or down below unless you dive right in; this sometimes results in death.  I suppose this is why the player can accumulate up to 9 lives, so that they can continually make mistakes and learn from them.  There are still problems with graphics lag and hit-box obscurities.  It's consistent throughout the series (all 3 games) that the graphics will slow down at some point, hit-boxes aren't very clear (especially with spikes), and that enemies will always be faster than the player's character.  There are multiple situations where a player can react fast enough to an enemy attack, but the character is simply not fast enough to perform that reaction.  The game, boss battles especially, require a lot of foresight and fooling the enemy into moving or attacking a certain way in order to beat them because Firebrand is sadly a slowpoke.  I find this ironic seeing how he's one of the fastest characters in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.  So the rest of the game is very similar: walk back and forth through a lot of empty maps and towns, collect items, fight through enemies and bosses to get to progress, and stop the destruction of the demon realm.  The abilities, enemies, level designs are all very similar to GQ1 from the gameboy.  I would say that GQ2 is more of a remake than a sequel to GQ1 (somethings better, others not).  The one new ability introduced is the tornado.  It allows Firebrand to spit a temporary platform to reach higher places.  One of the new level designs that weren’t in the first one is the Mirror level.  There are tons of mirrors everywhere and the player has to find the right ones to get to the main boss.  It doesn't hint at which ones are the right one, the player just has to experiment and see which one brings them forward and which ones just take them back to an earlier part of the level.  Some bosses seemed a bit difficult at first, but they were a push-over after figuring out their patterns compared to the bosses in GQ1.  Even the last boss was laughable after figuring out how his projectiles move.  After about 3-4 hours, I completed the game (it might have been less; I didn't keep an eye on the time attentively).  I was disappointed with the 2nd one.  The game was challenging at some points, but it wasn't as fun.  The music wasn't as memorable or appropriate.  In fact, some of the music I found to be really cheesy for the game.  I felt as if GQ2 was a cheap rehash of GQ1 and didn't have as much thought put into the development as much as GQ1 did.  Still, I'm glad I got through the game and knew that it at least existed.  It had a lot of great ideas, but executed poorly and made it boring.  GQ2 was definitely the weakest out of the Gargoyle's Quest series.

Retroview - Gargoyle's Quest

Source: Youtube Channel Sele1908

I remember playing Gargoyle's Quest on my cousin's Classic Gameboy and failing to get past even the first level.  Being the retro game that it is, the difficulty of the game was quite high as to challenge the player and having them fail time after time until they were good enough to overcome those obstacles.  Retro games were like that because they didn't have a lot of memory space to fit in a whole lot (not to mention development teams were really small).  So a lot of retro games were intentionally difficult and have certain game designs to make it last longer than it actually is for gameplay time.  With the addition of Firebrand in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, I was reminded of the game (as well as Demon's Crest which is essentially Gargoyle's Quest 3) and decided to play it once again and try to complete it.  I took the time over the weekend to play through Gargoyle's Quest 1 (and had enough time to complete even GQ 2) to see if I can overcome the struggles I had with the game.

Sure enough, I was still having difficulties with the first level as there are always enemies and traps beyond the screen that the player just has to know or be extremely cautious of to avoid.  The player also starts off with only two drops of health, so it's really easy to die and having to start over.  Well, what's different now than when I played back then is that I'm a lot more patient and I'm able to learn from mistakes a lot faster (or at least I hope so).  I finally got past the first level and "BAM", it presents itself looking like an RPG.  When you walk around the world map, you'll go into random encounters like in Pokémon, Final Fantasy, or Dragon Quest, but the player will fight enemies in a small platform area and finishes when all enemies are defeated.  This mix of RPG and Action platforming reminded me of The Legend of Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link.

So after about 2-3 hours of playing, I completed the game feeling satisfied that I was able to finish a game that I couldn't even get past the first level to when I was a kid.  Here are some of the things I noticed while playing:

Pros:
-The ability to fly presented an entirely new factor to the platforming
-The light RPG elements mixed the gameplay around and made it more than just a run 'n gun platformer
-Each level, concept, and ability was designed to compliment each other and had a purpose
-Gargoyle's Quest is hard, but it's fair (for the most part)
-It was fairly easy to figure out what to do next
-The music is atmospheric and memorable

Cons:
-A lot of problems with hit-boxes, you'd get hit by things that barely skim past your character's head or toe
-Some levels are unforgiving and losing all your lives means starting the whole game over
-Towns are boring with empty buildings and non-informative NPCs (mostly)
-The pacing of each dialogue drove me nuts, just watch 0:40-0:57, everyone talks like this
-There is a LOT of running back and forth.  You will revisit some areas two to three times
-Hated how the player couldn't hit anything outside the screen, which means having to get closer to danger

For the most part, I enjoyed playing the game.  The ability to fly along with the jumping was quite different and fun to do.  It's probably not a game I'd revisit soon again, but at least it was fun for that one playthrough.

VGCulture - Filler - BlazBlue Gag Reel

Gah, I can't believe I missed making a post earlier today.  It's been a busy day, and I'm already too tired to make a post.  But hey, I have a video to show that will make you laugh!  I ran into this while playing BlazBlue Continuum Shift last week:

Source: Youtube Channel DestroyZeTwinkies


Source: Youtube Channel DestroyZeTwinkies

Happy weekend and see you Monday.

GameLight Review - BlazBlue Continuum Shift

Official Site: http://us.playstation.com/games-and-media/games/blazblue-continuum-shift-extend-ps3.html

Source: Youtube Channel banjoparapanyo

Developer: Arc System Works

Publisher: Aksys Games

Platforms: Arcade, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Playstation Portable, Nintendo 3DS

Release Date: July 27, 2010

Genre: 2D Fighter

Pros:

-Breathtaking visuals in both environment backdrops and character sprites

-Beginner mode makes it more inviting for new comers

-The combat mechanics leaves a lot of room for creative combos and competitive gameplay

-Gameplay is smooth, stylish, dynamic, and fast-paced

-Story mode isn’t just a repeat of Calamity Trigger, but a follow up

-Daisuke Ishiwatari once again graces us with his genius music compositions

-Legion and challenge mode changes up the pacing from the usual arcade mode

-All characters play very uniquely and have their own play style

Cons:

-DLC characters a $7 each, what a rip!

-Last boss: Hazama of Arcade mode is stupidly hard to beat even at the easiest difficulty level

-The new character selection graphics aren’t as good as the CT, but that’s a preference

-Players who have gotten so used to Calamity Trigger might have to readjust for this one

After playing BlazBlue Continuum Shift for about 1.5 years, I’ve come to love it more and more.  The game just keeps getting better the more you play it.  BlazBlue has one of the most definitive stories to go along with a fighting game.  It’s so deep, moving and intricate that it just pulls the player into the world and change the ways one might feel about each individual character.  Characters become more than just toons that fight each other, but they all have reasons and agendas that coincide or conflict.  What’s more, Continuum Shift is a continuation of the events of Calamity Trigger rather than a simple update as most other fighting games seem to do.  The game itself is fast-paced, very stylish and a lot fun to perform all sorts of combos, skills, and special abilities, but having the story completes the package.  The changes from Calamity Trigger has added new specials for all characters, an optional beginner’s mode, some tweaks to how burst works, etc. to make the game more balanced and dynamic.  This would be one 2D fighter that I would recommend to those who don’t generally play fighting games as its intriguing story mode is like a game of its own while the beginner mode option makes it easier for one new to fighting games to ease into it while definitely recommending it for hardcore, competitive players as it has all the factors that make it challenging.

Aesthetics

The main reason why I decided to buy the game was because the music was by Daisuke Ishiwatari and is developed by the same team who created Guilty Gear.  It was sad to hear that they lost the rights to Guilty Gear and was no longer able to continue the series, and so I wanted to support them with the purchase of BlazBlue.  Sure enough, the music was amazing the first time I heard it and more so when I hear it now; however, the visuals shocked me.  I was expecting BlazBlue to be similar to Guilty Gear as characters from BlazBlue seem to look similar to those in the GG series.  The graphics were dynamic with beautiful backdrops with lighting effects, moving sprites, and a sort of 3D-ish feel to them.  The character sprites are a lot sharper and clean cut compared to what the team did for GG.  The animations are incredibly fluid, flashy, and stylish, making combos, specials, and attacking feel really good.  I have to admit that I was annoyed by some of the voice acting in both the English AND Japanese, but as I played the game more I began to adore the talents of both languages and their portrayal of the characters in the game.  The biggest treat for me was the Story mode, which convinced me to play through Calamity Trigger before I started on the story on Continuum Shift, as it became a major factor to what made the whole game come alive.  Story mode changed how I felt about each character and encouraged me to even play characters I generally wouldn’t choose.  My biggest complaint on the game’s aesthetics would probably be the main menu.  All modes and options are laid in one long list which makes it overwhelming and cluttered when most of them could have been collapsed into sub-categories and menus for an organized look.  Besides that, I can complain a bit about some of the cinematics having odd animations and character design that doesn’t match up to the rest of the game’s art style, but it’s not that big of a deal either.  Everything about BlazBlue Continuum Shift in terms of Aesthetics (Still images, sprites, backdrops, animations, cinematics, dialogue, voice acting, music, story, etc.) was very well thought out and meaningful.  BlazBlue turned out to be a much more polished and carefully developed fighter than I would have every guessed.  Aesthetics: 10/10

Buttons

The controls of the game are both easy and hard at the same time.  There are essentially 4 buttons to utilitze: light attack, medium, heavy, and a special attack that differs between all characters.  Players can easily perform combos by mashing light->medium->heavy and mix them around a bit; however, the combos and delays vary between each character.  Even with beginner mode on, a player may not be able to land all their hits in time and can be countered if the opponent is skilled.  Other times, combos are so easy for certain characters that even the most novice player can combo lock an opponent into a string of attacks that they can’t get out of.  This is why the controls are both easy and hard at the same time.  The mechanic of using three main attacks and a special key has been utilized in other games such as Melty Blood and now even Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 as it is much easier to understand and handle to single-action attacks from fighting games like Street Fighter or King of Fighters.  It makes it much easier to learn and perform combos and utilize special attacks into them.  Compared to most fighters, the leeway time between each attack for combos is rather lenient.  The difficult part in learning how to play each character when not in beginner mode is finding the flow and pacing of each character and knowing which abilities can be chaining to each other.  Some skills can still be difficult to execute, even with the use of a fight stick.  For the most part, the game’s controls and battle mechanics was easy to understand if given the patience and time to learn them.  Challenge mode helps a little, but rushes into the difficult techniques a bit too quickly.  Buttons: 9/10

Concept and Content

I was disappointed at first when I got the game and realized how very few characters the game seemingly had; however, I changed my mind about that as I played through story mode and saw how deeply involved each character was to the story of the BlazBlue as well as how distinguished each character players.  To give some examples: Bang Shishigami focuses on counter-attack, grapples, and dashes; Iron Tager excels at knock-backs, wall bounce hits, grabs, and pulls; Rachel Alucard requires the use of all her special abilities and the use of wind influence to make the most out of all her attacks; Taokaka is quick and so can perform a long string of attacks in a small amount of time; etc.  This idea of different play styles favors those who play in a certain way or ones who seek variety in their fighting games.  The additional challenge mode to the existing arcade, training, legion, and story mode is a good tutorial into more advanced techniques, but it isn’t entirely exciting.  The concept of story mode playing like a visual novel is both easy for the developers to continually create more in a short amount of time and providing a lot of insight to events, characters, and background history for the player.  The continuation of the story from where Calamity Trigger left off is the biggest treat in Continuum Shift.  Three additional characters were eventual available for DLC, but cost $7 each and doesn’t include their story modes.  Also, those who didn’t play Calamity Trigger will have a lot of unexplained events in the story of Continuum Shift.  It seems that upcoming release of BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend will remedy all these with stories of the first and second in one game, all the characters released so far, and a brand new mode.  Continuum Shift further extended the concepts and gameplay mechanics of Calamity Trigger, but seems to have been lacking in content that should have been there such as the additional 3 characters.  Concept & Concept: 9/10

Duration

The game as a whole doesn’t have a distinct flow, but Story mode is presented differently from Calamity Trigger.  Story mode starts off with an introduction as usual and then allows only the choice of playing Ragna the Bloodedge’s story rather than allowing the player to choose any character in any order.  After finishing Ragna’s story, 5+ or so opens up and then gradually unlocks more character stories as to keep a sort of flow to each one of them.  The game can last a very long time as I’ve had the game for 1.5 years and am still playing it.  Continuum Shift provides: Arcade, advanced tutorial (not available in Calamity Trigger), Challenge, Legion, Training, Online, and Story.  For those who play casually only for the fighting, arcade mode and legion mod will probably the main modes to play.  Those who like stories and learn more about the world of BlazBlue will play story mode and some arcade.  Competitive and hardcore players will play online mode a lot.  A good fighting game should have incredible replay value and provide something for the player to keep coming back for more.  BlazBlue Continuum Shift seems to fulfill those criteria.  Duration: 10/10

Fun

Honestly, my first impression of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift was kind of bad.  I loved the visuals and the music, but the voice acting annoyed me, the character selection felt very limited, and the last boss, Hazama, was so difficult and unfair (silly me thought I could handle the game right off the bat on normal mode, everyone else was alright other than the last boss) that it just left a bad impression for me.  I seldom went back to play it once in a while just because I loved the rest of the game play when I’m not fighting Hazama and because of the music.  The game was fast-paced.  Performing long combos felt good.  It was fun, but it was hard getting back into it everytime I had to face Hazama.  Eventually, I got a copy of Calamity Trigger and started playing story mode.  For me, I love fighting games because of the story and how all the characters have some sort of relationship with each other in some way or another and I would play each character to see their character endings and see what their story is about.  BlazBlue went far and beyond that with story mode as it expands long dialogues, history, backgrounds, and even multiple paths to go by to provide a rich and intricate world for the player to explore.  I got really hooked onto BlazBlue ever since I started playing story mode and have begun to play the game a bit more seriously with training and challenge mode to become more familiar with certain characters.  The only mode I’m reluctant to play anymore is Arcade because of Hazama.  Fun: 9/10

Overall

What started as a curiosity of music and the history behind the developers turned into a game I can fully appreciate and have fun with.  The fighting mechanics might be a bit confusing for those who are used to Street Fighter, King of Fighters, or Mortal Kombat at first, but those with patience to sit down and get to know each character will find a very gratifying 2D fighter that is so unique in many ways that it will be hard to put down.  BlazBlue’s eccentric, yet loveable characters draw one in as story mode unfolds their endeavors and agendas.  The many modes will keep game play fresh and entertaining after hundreds of rounds and continues to get better the more one plays it.  If you have never played any of the BlazBlue games, I recommend picking up BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend which releases on February 14^th, 2012 as it will contain the entire story mode from both Calamity Trigger and Continuum Shift as well all the characters released thus far with all returning modes and extra modes such as Abyss mode and Unlimited Wars.  This version of Continuum Shift was great with certain aspects lacking, but “Extend” will be the complete package worth a 10/10.  Overall: 9.4/10

GameLight - Syndicate

Official Site: http://www.ea.com/syndicate

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Syndicate - 4 Player Co-Op Briefing Trailer, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Syndicate is a revival and re-creation of 1993 isometric Real-Time Tactics game of the same name.  Some of the reactions are similar to those responding to the new XCOM game being made in how a strategy game is being remade into a First-Person Action Shooter.  The new Syndicate focuses on a team heavy cooperative play campaign much like games such as Left 4 Dead or Payday: The Heist, where a team of 4 players works together in fulfilling objectives and getting to the end.  The game looks slick with simple HUD layouts, beautifully designed sci-fi levels, and technological abilities to utilize.  I guess it does look interesting when talking about all the aspects of the game, but it kind of looks boring from the gameplay:

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Syndicate - Argentina Co-Op Gameplay, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

I hope that isn't the case because there's a lack of co-op games in the market, or at least good ones.  I can't help but be reminded of "Brink" when I look at the footages of this game.  Brink had a lot of great ideas, but were not executed really well.  Eventually, the online community died out and the game just wasn't the same with bots.  That's what I'm worried about for Syndicate.  It relies too much on "online community" with the whole game revolving around Cooperative gameplay.  If the online community dies out too quickly, the game becomes pointless unless they have "very" dynamic and smart AI bots to play with (in which Brink did not).  I'm going to try to find time to get and play the demo so that I have a better idea of what the game is like, but I'll most likely skip buying Syndicate if the online community dies out.  I'm pretty sick of spending money on online intensive multiplayer games and finding out that no one's playing it anymore.  Syndicate releases on February 21st.  Here's hoping that it's a good game.