Ah, yes. While the Yanks gear themselves up for their release of Xenoblade, us brits are starting to polish off the second major wii JRPG release of the past few months in the shape of the Last Story. I don’t think any major introductions are in order. This is the latest RPG from Mistwalker and was directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, best known for being the creator of Final Fantasy (just what is it with his naming convention? How silly is it going to be when we get a dozen sequels to this game?). For a while it seemed that this game and Xenoblade wouldn’t get a western release but then Nintendo of Europe stood up and released the games in Europe and, much later, the US branch also eventually got confirmation of a local release, though they need to wait a fair bit for their versions!
Xenoblade proved that, despite the incredibly polarising Final Fantasy XIII, the JRPG is alive and well as a genre and should not be ruled out. Monolith created an absolutely huge game which helped show what the genre was capable of while keeping true to its roots. The last story took a completely different route and focused far more on the story and characters rather than the world. As a result, it’s far more focused and you’ll likely grow attached to the cast somewhat more than those in Xenoblade. At least I did.
The Last Story eschews turn based menu combat in favour of a more real time system, similar to FFXII and Xenoblade. You control a single character while your allies are controlled by the AI. For the most part, you will play the part of Zael (Elza in the japanese version) who wields a sword and crossbow. This allows him to take on enemies in close combat as well as shoot them from afar if need be. Early on, he also gains an ability to draw enemies towards him, allowing his allies to attack from behind or give spellcasters time to launch their spells. It’s an ability which you will use a LOT!! Spellcasters take time to charge their attacks but their attacks also leave an area of effect once they hit. Aside from the heal area, these have no effect on their own but Zael is able to disperse the circles with a special attack to cause status effects on the enemy or allies. For example, dispersing a heal area causes all allies in the area to instantly gain a fixed amount of health as opposed to gradually gaining it by coming into contact with the circle or dispersing a fire area causes a guard break status effect on enemies. Taking advantage of these properties makes it much easier to take on large numbers of enemies.
Attacking is not automatic in this game, you need to push the analogue stick towards your target in order to attack and the stick needs to be neutral in order to perform special attacks which you unlock later in the game. There’s also a simple cover mechanic in play which allows you to hide from the enemy and protect you from certain ranged attacks. It also gives you access to certain attacks of your own. Aiming with the crossbow allows Zael to scan the area and highlight points of interest. Sometimes, it allows him to issue orders to his group to take out a long range attacker or attack a pillar, causing it to collapse and eliminate enemies in the surrounding area. Zael is also able to issue orders to his allies, telling them to retreat and heal or perform a specific spell. This is especially important later because some enemies have particularly high elemental defences to certain spells and your AI allies are too stupid to realise and end up healing them with their spells.
While in combat, each character in your group is given 5 lives at the start of each battle. If you lose your health, then you are revived instantly, though AI allies take a while to get back up unless you assist them. If they lose all 5 lives, then they are KO’d and will not revive. If your character meets the same fate, it’s game over. Having said that, the game is rather generous with its autosave feature so there’s not too much to worry about if you die (and that’s a pretty big “if” in itself).
All in all, it’s a JRPG from one of the best known names in the business. It may fall foul of almost every cliché possible for JRPGs but there’s a lot of talent involved in the game and the way has already been paved to show that such games are not stagnant and still relevant. So, how does it fare?
This weeks post was going to be a mini Review of Catherine but I decided not to do one since everybody has probably played it by now, seeing as it’s a year late for us Brits. Also, I can sum it down to a few lines: Interesting story, Frustratingly obtuse at times. Block puzzle game not particularly fun. Ultimately very disappointing and nowhere near as subversive as one may be led to believe. Also, like all other morality systems, you either go all the way in one path or you might as well not bother.
Anyway, with that over and done with (and the last story being played through), I’ve managed to do a little more of my Try-GK saber!
And now for something a little different! Up until now, my mini reviews have been on boxed titles and I haven’t really done a review for download titles found on XBL or PSN. The reasons are many, like how I often don’t pick them up until much later than release or that, due to their nature, I don’t really have that much to say about them. Even the best ones, like hard corp: Uprising, tend to fall into either category or both but a few weeks ago, I bought a PSN game which kinda needs to be talked about, mainly because nobody is!! That game is Malicious!
I first learned of the game via some gameplay trailers from youtube. It was released on the Japanese PSN back in 2010 and the trailers gave it an almost Bayonetta like flow to the combat and I was immediately interested.
This was the original launch trailer for the game. But afterwards, we didn’t hear much until late last year when it was announced that the game was to be given a western release. And it arrived earlier this month in the UK!! There is pretty much no story to the game. You are a vessel given a power to defeat a great evil but are told that other beings contain parts of your power and you need to beat them in order to be powerful enough to defeat the big bad! There is a backstory which is contained within the game and it’s loooooooooooooong! When the game itself gives you a bookmark to allow you to come back to reading it later, you know it’s long! It does provide the setting though and also hints at the name of your avatar.
You can choose between a male and female character, though the impact on gameplay is negligible at best. Your character attacks with a mantle around their neck. Initially, only 2 abilities are available. Punch and shot. they’re pretty self explanatory but you get more as you progress. The game starts in a white hub world and gives you access to the first 5 stages and you are able to tackle them in any order you wish, though ones tackled later will be considerably more difficult compared to if you took them on earlier. The stages themselves are rather small and the objective is to take out the boss which appears at the start of the stage. To do so, you are expected to take out the smaller enemies which appear to collect “aura” which can be used to augment your attacks to make them more powerful. Each boss holds a special ability which is passed onto you once you defeat them. For instance, one boss wields a sword and defeating her allows you to change your mantle to a similar sword which allows for wide, powerful but slow attacks.
There’s no lifebar as such in the game either. Instead, when you take sufficient damage, the screen flashes red and your character loses a limb. If you lose 4, then you go into a “sudden death” like state. Limbs can be restored by using aura and the more limbs you need to repair, the more it costs. Sadly, you can’t restore 1 at a time so if you lose 2 or 3 and don’t have enough aura to restore them all in 1 go, you aren’t able to!
That’s pretty much the game in a nutshell. So, how well does it play?
After the somewhat disappointing summer event last year, it looks like there was feeling of a return to normalcy for the winter event. Lots of new kits and a larger variety of characters on display. In fact, there wasn’t one show which dominated the dealer floor, though Haganai had a strong showing as did Madoka Magica.
I tried to acquire 3 kits this time around but failed to get any of them. BOO! Oh well, at least my bank balance is safe for a while, I guess!
This one was top of my list, the Princess of the Crystal from Mawaru Penguin Drum. She was actually a very popular choice for many kit makers this time around but the one above is the one by Cerberus Project. I felt it was one of the better ones on display so it was top of my want list but also the one I thought I was least likely to get since Cerberus Project is a pretty big name in the circles and their works are always very popular.
From the launch event on Saturday to the mini tourney this week and the lnline playing for most of the remaining time, I’ve been neglecting a fair bit of things. That should change soon though as the UK version of Catherine should be hitting my mailbox soon! But I was able to pry myself away from Soul Calibur long enough to do a little more work on Saber. And the main thing that prompted me was the custom parts which I unlocked in the game which allows you to make saber in the create-a-soul mode. If you’ve seen the parts then you know exactly what I’m talking about. I have already seen several attempts at introducing saber into the game, the most hilarious one was a saber with Leixias moveset. Seeing saber with a thin sword and bobbing up and down instead of having her usual stoic fighting stance was rather surreal.
At the moment, I’m still just experimenting with the colours a little. The blue above is actually lightly sprayed over a coat of silver paint to give it a little glistening effect. The gold needs to be done over a few more times but I’m trying to decide if this is the type of blue I want to go with for the kit.. There are also a few other minor issues which need to be taken care of as well.
The Skirt parts don’t fit exactly and so, i’ll need to work on filling the gap and it also had a knock on effect with the upper body as well. I’ll have to be very careful about how I handle that section. It might actually end up being harder than the rest of the kit put together as it restricts my ability to mask and cover the exposed areas while I paint. Still, It’s not that bad and you can’t expect the kit to be a complete cakewalk… Just need to pry myself away from the video games long enough to work on it more. And Mass Effect 3 is at the beginning of next month!!! And there’s continuum shift II Extend and Hyperdimension Neptunia mkII in between!! Too… Many… Games!!!
Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and swords. Eternally Retold…
There was a time when these words got me pretty excited over a game as I knew that I was about to play a fighting game which stood above many of the others. Soul Edge/Blade on the PS1 is one of my favourite games from that console generation and I haven’t met any gamer who has a bad thing to say about soul calibur 1 & 2. But then time was not kind to the series and after the next 2 games, the series really felt like it was in its dying throes and doomed to being a relic and slowly forgotten. But now, 3 years later, Namco have decided to have another crack at the genre and provided us with the 5th in the soul calibur series (and 6th Overall).
Namco decided to do a “Tekken 3″ on us and set the next game 17 years after the events of Soul Calibur IV and in doing so, pretty much removed most of the previous cast and replaced them with younger “disciples,” keeping very few of the original cast. So just as how Heihachi Mishima, Paul Phoenix, kuma, yoshimitsu and the williams sisters are the only characters to have appeared in every Tekken game so far, now only Mitsurugi, Voldo and Sigfried have appeared in every soul game. Naturally, this didn’t go down too smoothly with some of the fanbase but for the most part, there are characters which play in the same style of almost every previous character… (Damn you Namco, where’s my Talim?)
The game introduces the children of Sophitia as the main characters in this game and they take center stage on the story mode. Aside from story mode, there’s also the obligatory arcade and training mode and also a new mode called quick battle. Quick battle is an interesting addition which has been done in a few games before. Basically, it’s an offline mode where you pit your skills against specially created AI opponents which range from weak E5 enemies to demonic A1 monsters! And if you’re a real glutton for punishment (or an amazing player) you can try out the legendary battle mode where you fight absurdly powerful opponents one after another (I beat the first opponent to unlock him as a playable character and that took some effort!!).
Online mode has also gone and had an overhaul. Along with ranked and player matches, there’s now a new option called global Colosseum where players can join a room in their area and chat with other players while waiting to be randomly paired up with other players for matches. At the time of writing, the rooms have yet to be populated to a decent level yet but that’s how it’s meant to work in any case. And, of course, Create a Character has been given an overhaul so you have more control over your custom characters looks.
The question is whether or not SCV can impress once more after the very disappointing SCIV…
Well, this has proven rather annoying. For the first time I find myself with the desire to write about a certain something but am not allowed to. Embargo style!!! Actually, it’s self imposed but I don’t want anyone to get into trouble for it so everyone will just have to wait for my impressions of the 5th tale of souls and swords (actually, technically, it’s the 6th but that’s just being petty!)
So for now, I get to talk about something which is kinda related and also something which has been a while coming. A long time (well, not that long, but still…) ago, I purchased a Super Streetfighter IV TE fightstick round 2 and with help from Gahling over at neo empire, I was able to get it dual modded to work on both PS3 and 360 and while I was at it, I also replaced 6 of the original buttons.
But… that wasn’t enough. You see, I’m a rather vain SOB and I like having things which are different from the rest. That’s one of the big reasons why I work on garage kits instead of just buying PVC figures afterall. So after I got my stick, I played with the idea of getting some custom artwork done for it. Then I started talking with good friend and illustrator Radiant Dreamer about it. Early on, I decided on a Blazblue art as it was, and still is, my fave fighting game so it just seemed to fit. I also knew that Radiant was familiar with the game as he worked on the graffiti cover for the UK release of Calamity Trigger (which was almost universally reviled, even by himself to some degree but lets not go there…) so I asked about it and things started from there. In the end, I opted for a completely original work instead of just photoshopping some artwork you can find on the net into something usable and asked Radiant to do the deed as I knew what he was able to do by looking at some of his other works (not to mention some pretty cool Blazblue art which didn’t get used for covers, but should have!)!
Now, I received the finished piece last week and got it on my stick! You’re curious now, aren’t you?
Yay! First new season of 2012! 2011 was a bit of a mixed bag in the end. There were relatively few stand out shows and even the last season didn’t really blow me away despite having some seriously big names. Hopefully, 2012 will really impress and it has a very good chance to do so, seeing as a show I have been waiting literally years for will FINALLY be airing in the spring (or at least, that’s the scheduled release date for it!). but there’s still a season between it and me so we’ll go through the usual motions first with a look back at the previous season and then a look forward to the new shows incoming!
Best Show
Guilty Crown
Pretty tough call. There were a few shows last season which were pretty good but all of them had some glaring faults. Guilty crown had problems with pacing and characterisation. The plot had long sections on some episodes which didn’t really serve any purpose other than to be padding and the main characters, at least initially, are rather unlikeable. Gai is the arrogant prick everyone loves to hate, even though you know it’s just a façade, Inori is your typical “emotionless girl” and Shu… My god, Shu. One can understand his reasoning and what he says when he goes against the grain but at the same time, he comes off like such a wimp, you just want to give him a kick in the ass to get things going. He’s not Ikari Shinji bad, but it’s similar. The problem is that the show doesn’t bother to take time to explore things in a little more detail so everything is pretty much surface level. Like the writers got the bones of the show up and then took a nap!
Having said that, the show did just enough to make me coming back for more to see what happens next without making it feel a little forced (horizon, I’m looking at you!!). It also hit the ground running and then started to fumble, while other shows are still only now just picking up the pace (shana III, Last Exile). It’s far from perfect but it’s arguably the show which kept me the most entertained last season.
Being in a rut sucks… After taking a little break (and doing a little gunpla again), I really feel like doing another garage kit and with my backlog as big as it is, you’d think that there’d be no problem finding one which I really felt like working on. But after working on a really big project (KOS-MOS) and then spending months on just fixing another (Himeji), I just wanted a simple, small kit which wouldn’t give me too much hassle. So that basically ruled out Bayonetta and Ceila Aintree (Not ready to tackle another 1/4 scale and Aintree has a crapload of parts). I did stumble across a very old kit which I purchased and forgot about but as I started cleaning it up, I noticed that the parts were in really REALLY bad shape. Possibly worse than Himeji… So I just stopped right there before I got really frustrated with the whole process again.
But then I remembered I bought a couple of kits from Volks a while back which should fit all my criteria. And, in the end, I decided to go with…
SABER!! It’s been a very long time since I did a Saber kit. (normally, I try to stick to a rule where I only make 1 kit of a character, but it’s been years since I completed my last Saber kit and that rule was never going to last…). This kit is part of the Try-GK line from Volks and is very very easy to tidy up and build so she seems like a great choice to get me back into gear.
The first post of 2012! And thanks to some extended time off, I have no real projects or figure purchases to speak of (though I have another new kit to add to the queue!) so for this post, I decided to go and review the last game I purchased in 2011, Gundam Extreme vs on the PS3
Despite it being released back on the 1st of December, my copy didn’t arrive until the 23rd, just as I was about to visit the folks for the holiday!! Play Asia started shipping Playstation products to the UK again (they stopped shipping PSP stuff after ye olde Lik-Sang incident and PS3 stuff was also effected, though not PS2, strangely enough!) so I thought I’d give them a shot again. Pretty sure they weren’t this slow before…
In any case, this is the latest version of the gundam vs series which started way back on the PS2 back in 2001. This would be the 9th game in the series and the first on the current gen consoles. The previous 2 games were released on PSP and the ones before that all found a home on the PS2 (save for 1, which was released on the gamecube). The series and I have a fair bit of history, seeing as I played all but 2 in the series, the aforementioned GC game and Gundam vs Gundam NEXT, which was one of the games on the PSP. Most games in the series focused on a particular series. The first game had the first gundam series, AEUG vs Titans went for Zeta and then we had 2 games based in the SEED universe (Alliance vs ZAFT is probably still my fave in the series after all these years). But for the more recent games, they started combining series for a wider variety of more recognisable units.
Extreme Vs also marks a bit of a step back in terms of game mechanics as it does away with features which were introduced in Gundam vs Gundam which is a GREAT THING as it means that units no longer have retarded “all area” attacks they can call on. Gundam vs Gundam NEXT removed the feature too but ended up being horribly unbalanced I’ve been told.
As for game mechanics, the main points have stayed constant throughout the series. Battles are fought usually between 2 teams of 2 units. Each team have a set number of life points and choose a unit to control in the game. If the unit is destroyed, a set number of life points are deducted from the team bar. The team loses when they run out of life points. More powerful units cost more points so they can be destroyed fewer times. Using gundam SEED as an example (because it’s one of the better known shows), you can die in a GINN multiple times without too much of an issue but if you die in Freedom gundam twice, you hit Game over!
The games are also released in the arcades so the controls are fairly simple and easy to grasp but allow for quite nuanced control of your unit when you become more capable. The 4 main buttons are jump, shot, melee and change target. Different units have different numbers of attacks depending on what they can do in their series and the different attacks can be done via various button combinations or shortcuts on the gamepad. For example, The nu Gundam has access to a hyper bazooka and fun funnels as well as basic beam saber and rifle and the Strike gundam can change packs on the fly. But a unit like red frame only has his beam rifle and gerbera straight, but has more damaging melee attacks compared to other units.
For the home versions, there’s the standard arcade mode, obligatory multiplayer (both online and offline flavours) but also a mission mode which is not seen in the arcade versions. Most are basic “defeat the enemy” missions but on occasion, you find yourself locked to a specific unit and find yourself trying to recreate scenes from some of the series. Complete some missions with a certain criteria and you get emblems you can use to display on your online profile and earn trophies (I just use the Katejina Loos emblem though). Oh, and the Zudah really is CRAP!!!
That’s it for the backstory, how did the game feel?
