KOEI, Seriously, Please Start Announcing Localizations

KOEI really, really, really likes the Vita...

....in Japan.

No less than four Warriors titles are in production for the device at the moment, and it borders on absurd at just how much attention the Vita's getting from KOEI, even if it -is- half ports.  Yet, when those ports are Samurai Warriors 2 (and Xtreme Legends -and- Empires) and Warriors Orochi 3 (as an enhanced version of the game, same as PS3's enhanced version) you will be surprised at just how fucking okay I am with this.  Those two games join the line-up alongside Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends (potentially 8 somewhere along the line too?) and the newly announced Shin Dynasty Warriors Gundam which are both being developed for PS3 -and- Vita.  And that's all of just what I know about, who the hell knows if there's other stuff that I've missed completely, because it's entirely possible.

The first reaction to this is supposed to be a level of cautious optimism, of course.  They're not exclusive games to the Vita, but they're being developed for it nonetheless, and that likely fosters a sort of side-by-side mentality about them.  Consumers will only buy one or the other by-and-large of course (KOEI ain't gonna touch Cross-buy with a ten foot pole) but it broadens the pool of potential buyers at the very least if you put both out, and there's no reason -not- to.  That they're coming to the Vita at all is a good sign no matter how you look at it.  I basically mention that side-by-side mentality for the localization aspect of the games, of course.  Speaking of...

The next reaction is the slow, creeping disdain and cynicism that one has naturally fostered for KOEI by this point when it comes to actually releasing games outside of Japan.  We did get the original Warriors Orochi 3 (as digital-only for PS3 which is something that I have ranted about enough), and we did get Samurai Warriors 2, Xtreme Legends and Empires way back in the day easy enough as well.  DW8:XL seems a given to come out over here, but I'm not pinning any hopes on disc-based, and Shin Dynasty Warriors Gundam....is the sticky one of the bunch.  We don't know anything about it really - is it just another DW: G game with a new name? - so it's hard to say one way or another, especially with Namco Bandai being involved on top of KOEI.  Warriors Orochi 3 coming out over here originally might even be a strike against its chances since WO3 Ultimate is a (highly) enhanced version of it.  But we'll just have to see on that, I suppose.

Now, as mentioned, the really sticky thing to wonder about if -any- of these games come out is format.  KOEI surprised the hell out of me by announcing DW8 on disc with a proper localization and such, but I expect that to be the exception rather than the rule moving forward.  I have zero problems throwing money at people at GameStop for a copy of a KOEI game on a disc.  Zero.  While I've raised a stink about digital-only in the past (and it's still an issue, though definitely something I've chilled out on some), I only have a few issues with throwing digital money at PSN for a copy of a KOEI game in digital form.  Those issues are primarily "How big is it" and "That's going to take fucking forever to download".  Which was a legitimate concern with my current PS3 - the fans kick on to 100% or seems like it, which means it's not long for this world.  It takes the better part of six hours to download one gig of data, I'd bet, so something like WO3 which was eleven gigs?  Ridiculous.  Cannot, will not ever happen unless I cart my system to someone else and it manages to not die after I delete 22 gigs of data to accommodate the strange way PSN downloads work with full games or something.

When I get a shiny new PS3 with 500 gigs of storage space this will....be far less of an issue.  It'll obviously still take fucking forever to download, but the great thing is that I might actually be able to let it.  In the end, it's all about just being able to buy and play a game that you want to play.  So when there's an unreasonable barrier, of course it's going to be frustrating, but I guess the option then just becomes "Make it work".  So maybe I will.  I can tell you with certainty that if the games come out in the West on Vita, I don't care what format, I will buy the ever-loving shit out of them.  I will make a KOEI page and it will have all the bubbles for Dynasty Warriors Next and Toukiden and whatever of the above titles actually come out, even if I have to buy them all digitally.  I will eschew whatever I have to in an effort to have multiple KOEI Warriors games at my fingertips.  And I will seriously consider a 32 gig stick if need-be.  You just have to make it happen, KOEI.

there is honestly nothing about the prospect of any of those four Warriors games on my Vita that I don't love

The Rest of Sony's TGS

Quite a few things of import were announced at TGS where Sony is concerned, but for my part, I've only talked about one thing in particular because it is special.  Still, the rest of the news is good as well and it's something that I want to cover, since the bulk of it might be things that I partake in myself, or at the very least, is somewhat cool on its own merits.  While there's no real megaton big news here (TGS is never the place for 'giant' announcements) what is here is substantial in its own right, really, and I would be remiss if I looked towards anything else to talk about tonight since it seems the after-conference stuff has all been more or less sorted out as well.  As in, the stuff that doesn't get spoken of specifically during the conference, but is still out there at TGS and doesn't generally get much mention for whatever reason.  Like Earth Defense Force 3 Portable for Vita that got announced sometime after E3 if I'm remembering correctly.

First up is the above-pictured new PS3 Model which I am taking to calling the "Super Slim" because that's kind of a pretty neat name for it.  Which is appropriate because it's a neat-looking system.  Or, rather, I think it's a downright sexy-looking system, being at least much, much more sexy than the actual PS3 Slim that looks kind of terrible when put next to this or even (especially?) when put next to the original PS3.  But it was all about functionality at that point, and not-so-much form factor, and now that that's all pretty sorted, they can focus on the form factor, which they have certainly done.  There's only so many ways in my own vocabulary that I know of how to convey that the aesthetics of this model are pretty pleasing.  And that is kind of the only real thing to point out with this particular design since, aside from being sexy and lighter/smaller than the Slim, even, it's kind of fundamentally the same from what we know about it.

The main difference, at least from what I can think of, is the actual method with which the discs are loaded into the system.  You might notice that the area on the right of the system top, the ridged area, is higher than that on the left, and that's for the very simple reason of being the disk tray.  From what I can tell, instead of popping up, the tray slides to the side and then slides back.  Whether it's automated or not, I can't tell, nor can I surmise just how good of an idea it is in theory.  It's....different to think of, certainly, as disks have either slid in or were popped into a tray that popped open (PS1/2 era design), so having a sliding opening is something different entirely I think.  Again, I don't know just how practical it is, but it's...unique, and for the form factor of the device, so long as it's not an inherently bad idea, it'll work just fine.  I know that if I'm in the market for a new PS3, I'd probably shoot for one of these rather than the regular Slims.

Speaking of reveals, there were some note-worthy ones aside from Muramasa:  The Demon Blade getting a Vita port.  The important things are not necessarily all the game reveals, however, as Soul Sacrifice revealed a new launch window of Spring 2013 that I honestly thought it had anyway, so I wasn't too disappointed by it.  Of course, the launch window is purely Japan-only as, even though it's confirmed that it's going to launch in North America, the specifics with that are more up in the air than the Japanese launch, clearly.  The game seems like it's shaping up rather nicely which is good, since it is definitely going to be a game that everybody wants you to be hyped up for.  For my part, I don't generally get into Monster Hunter type games (Including Monster Hunter), but with Ragnarok Odyssey on the horizon in my pre-order cache, I will see if that type of game does fit with me when it's not as...er....'heavy' as Monster Hunter itself.

Also revealed were a few offerings from Namco Bandai and Tecmo KOEI, throwing some new and old the Vita's way.  Namco Bandai's offerings include God Eater 2 which will be a PSP/Vita release in Japan (likely just a Vita release in everywhere else) and a Gundam game that apparently has an embargo on it because it is a rather new approach.  From what I could tell via the Joystiq liveblog, the Gundam game is based around the actual Gundam Models themselves, rather than 'actual' Gundams, and there was a lot of explosions and such.  When I say Gundam Models, I mean the type that you can assemble, so I really have no idea what to anticipate in terms of story and design around that.  Still, it's interesting nonetheless and the fact that I can't get information for it is a bit intriguing since it suggests that it will be a very new attempt, instead of a rehash or a version of a Gundam game already out there.  Maybe.

Tecmo KOEI's offerings also incorporate a little new and old as 'Toukiden' seems to be a pretty good merger of that in itself.  Billed as a new thing, Toukiden doesn't really have any screenshots floating around there, but it's going to be a good old hack-and-slash title with fantasy elements that takes place in a Feudal Japan setting.  A fictional one, of course, because the trailer (forgive the quality) features the female protagonist(? or just one of the characters perhaps) slicing up a rather gigantic spider that I'm...just going out on a limb here and suggesting isn't historically accurate.  You know, just a hunch here.  Seeing as Omega Force (the Dynasty/Samurai Warriors crew) knows how to make some action-packed trailers, I'm not going to take it as an indication of how the game is played aside from the idea that there will be slicing and possibly giant spiders, but for what it's worth, I think they have a pretty good grip on the whole hack-and-slash thing so this one's on my radar.

Tecmo KOEI also announced that Ninja Gaiden 2, like Ninja Gaiden Sigma before it, will be getting ported to the Vita as Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus.  There's literally nothing else said about it and being as I didn't play the Vita port of Sigma, I don't know what to expect.  Buuuuut, while we're on the subject of Ninja Gaiden, there was a little something else revealed at TGS.  Remember Yaiba?  The game that promised Ninjas, Zombies and giant mechs?  Well...it's still promising that, but under its new title - Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z.  It's kind of brilliant, actually, in that the main character, Yaiba, is all three of the promised things in one.  As a Ninja, he was killed by Ryu Hayabusa and then brought back to something resembling life with the assistance of some cybernetic implants which he hopes will help him get vengeance on everybody's favorite Ninja.  Like an entire arm and half a head have been replaced.  So Yaiba is literally a Cyber-Zombie Ninja.  That....is probably the coolest goddamn thing I have typed all night.

There's no way I can top that, so I'm not even going to try.  I will mention that Playstation Plus is coming to the Vita in November, featuring its own(?) Instant Game Collection, the usual fare from PS Plus, and an additional (read:  Separate from PS3) Gig of Online Storage which will be real nice for folks running out of Memory stick room.  Or cards with which to place bubbles upon.  Also coming to Vita is Playstation Mobile when it launches on October 3rd.  Neither of those are as awesome as a Cyber-Zombie Ninja (even though I am partial to PS Plus and just resubbed for a year), so I will not stay on them for any longer than this.  Because come on.  I just have to say it one more time as I close out this post, just to get it out of my system and make sure it ends on a high note.

Cyber.  Zombie.  Ninja.

Platinum Get - Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3

Earlier this week, you might have noticed that I ever so diplomatically shared the fact that I had finally conquered the Online Portion of Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 which was a terrible hurdle considering the way the online portion of DWG3 is set up.  Not well, that is.  It is set up not well.  It's not good, is my point.  And I am free of it now - never again must I sully my enjoyment of all things Warriors by waiting fifteen minutes to play a minute of the game with people I don't honestly care one whit about.  Now, the manner in which I obtained this, my nineteenth Platinum Trophy, is quite strange and amusing to me, but let's do a little backstory before I get to that, yes?

Now, as the picture in the tweet above states quite clearly, you have to complete 100 Online Missions to get that trophy which is honestly one of the longer trophies in the game since this was KOEI's first foray into Online with Gundams and it shows, which was rather unfortunate.  To do a mission, you choose from the about two dozen missions offered (if that many) and you can join a party already underway or create one of your own.  Fairly standard, of course, and the parties can be from 2 to 4 players.  Unfortunately, this early stage is actually where the first wrinkle shows up because after making a match, you can't then adjust it or force a start - so if you have a four person party opened but can't quite find a last person, you wait or you close it out and try again.  And while you're waiting, this is where the second wrinkle comes in, and it's quite an annoying one.

DWG3 features a "Play While You Wait" option for Multiplayer Participants which is exactly what it sounds like; you choose your Gundam and hop into the map early to mess around in it and play the game.  Sounds alright on the surface, right?  Well, the problem with this mode is that it is entirely fluff.  If you hop in it and end up beating the mission before someone else joins your game (which is an entirely real possibility), absolutely none of it saves, you don't get a tick in your online missions played, nothing.  You are then merely dumped back into the waiting room, as it were, to wait for that last person to join still which is as sad as it sounds.  The other bad part of this is that, when you enter it, it doesn't force everyone in, however, if the room fills up while one or more people are playing while they wait, it has to get them out of the map before it can count down to start the Gundam selection which precedes the countdown to start the map, also known as a loading screen.  Basically, it adds unnecessary seconds to an already too-long process, which just annoys me.  The worst part about it is that after you do this successfully, you play the map and they generally take all of one to five minutes to complete.  You'll have waited more than played in most cases and all you get is another notch.

Then you do it 99 more times.  Like, literally, the exact same process.  There are no persistent rooms - when you create a match that's exactly what you do, create a single match.  So even if you have a buddy to help ensure that you'll get these plays done up, that's 100 matches you have to set up individually, which as I said is a time-wasting process no matter how you go about it.  It takes the mere prospect of joy out of the equation and leaves you with an experience that is as lackluster as you might expect, because there is simply not enough gameplay pulled from the amount of time you have to invest in this poorly slapped-together mode.  It took several nights of effort and frustration and the last outing in this was by far the worst; population has dwindled severely as you might expect, and it's rather difficult to pull three people together in a single match, much less four, but 13 times I managed it, bringing me to my 99th match completed.  So close.  So.  Close.  I could almost taste it.  The three matches before had been gotten into easily enough, but then I came upon a horrifying sight.

There were no open matches.

Not a single match was open for someone like me to hop in and play and it took five minutes of refreshing the list before I found anything.  However, those matches were all 1/4 or I just simply could not join, presumably because the open slot(s) were private ones, thus keeping me out, unable to attain this last match.  And that happened for ten minutes until finally one new match opened in a fight against the Psycho Gundam, piloted by Four Murasame.  As if someone had sensed my anxiousness, they opened a match with only one slot as if to beckon to me.  "Come here, Mogs.  Play this last match, end this torture for yourself."  And so I did, and it was good.  The match went on as they ordinarily do, I charged the giant enemy and kept wailing on it until it died while support from my partner kept us afloat, and within two minutes, the trials were over.  I was victorious.  The trophy dinged, I saved, exited the game, synced my trophies and backed up my save, just like that, and then I went to bed.

It was a bittersweet victory, however, as I knew the true challenge lay ahead, in finishing the task of raising all the characters to Friendship Level 5, which I believe I have talked about at length here before, so I will refrain from bringing that back up.  When I stopped playing Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 before picking it back up for Online Missions, I was well on my way, but my spirit had simply been downtrodden too much, it was more than I could be happy with, so I had to step away to return at a later date.  That later date was today and, with a resigned sigh, I dove into the game and looked up my friendship scores to see who needed a little attention.  It was then that a miracle happened.

I hit up to go to the bottom of the graph, to see just who were not in the "Level 5" category, and I went to the bottom, assuredly.  The...bottom of the Level 5 Category.  In those moments of confusion, the 'ding' of a trophy sounded out, and the popup of "Purebread Innovator" in the upper right corner distracted my eye to it.  Still, it didn't sink in just what had happened, nor did I realized what was then going to happen.  Directly after that single pop-up disappeared, yet another 'Ding!' sounded out, almost more cheerfully than the first, and the words "Ultimate Dynasty Warrior Gundam" finally brought it home.  I was done.  The Platinum trophy was mine.

I don't know how it happened, nor do I know why.  My theory is that Friendships persist and grow in the online mode as well, since that's the only way I can make any sense of it.  The only problem with that is that I simply don't remember who was at Level 4 or even 3, so I can't really confirm that I fought alongside those people, nor was I informed of any of these Friendship ups, but you know what?  I don't care, I'm done.  I can put the experience of Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3, mixed as it was, behind me and continue on to different ventures, to different games and enjoyment.  It may have been the most anti-climactic Platinum Trophy I've earned to date, but it's no less satisfying.  And with Nineteen down, I just have to soldier on towards number Twenty, emboldened by this new victory.

Platinum Get - Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 (Kind of)

In truth, as of writing this, I haven't gotten the Platinum trophy for Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 just yet, nor have I synchronized since my last play session, so anyone who would check my trophies -right now- (not, y'know, months from now) would see I'm only about 80% done with the game.  So why am I writing a "Platinum Get" post for a game that I have not, in fact, platinum'd?  Simple enough:  The platinum is child's play after what I did today.  What I did today being earning the "True Gundam Dynasty Warrior" trophy, the third of three gold trophies that the game has to offer.  How does one earn this trophy you ask?  Quite simply, it is earned by unlocking and beating every single other mission in the game.  This is a trying task as you might think, especially when certain missions aren't unlocked until you've taken one of the derp suits out (Zaku Tank, Ball, etc.) a number of times sometimes equaling 20, or used them enough to have shot down 1,000 other suits.

Only after those missions have been unlocked does one final mission that's likely been taunting you for 20+ hours now, if not longer, unlock itself, "The Return of the True Dynasty Warrior Gundam!".  It is a Ten-star mission that can only be played on Hard and it's not the first of that type, but this mission is not fucking around.  It is, in all honesty, the single-most difficult challenge the game has to offer which is, well, thematically appropriate, but frustrating at the same time.  I'm afraid this is one of those situations where I have to explain something to explain something else, so bear with me for a moment.  In DWG3's field-based nonsense, there are a few special fields that serve certain purposes, of them the most annoying are the Fortresses and the Missile Bases.  Fortresses cut down Morale/Effectiveness Loss when a negative thing takes place (failed a sub-goal, lost a pilot, lost a field, etc.) which is kind of an 'eh' effect, but the problem is that Fortresses are a bitch to take because while in the field for one, you're constantly being bombarded by, well, bombs.  Then Missile Bases are easier to take and you want to take them immediately because they have a very special and very annoying ability:  They launch missiles at opposing bases, surprisingly enough.  Guess what happens?

The field instantly falls.  Missile Bases are capable of hitting -any- base, including your HQ and the only way to stop a Missile after it's been launched is by taking the Missile Base field which is 99% of time easier said than done.  As far as I can tell, there is no rhyme nor reason to how and when a Missile Base fires, nor what it will target, but it doesn't matter if you just spent five minutes taking a Fortress, all it takes is that ten seconds for the Missile to get from the base to the Fortress and -bam- it is not yours anymore and you'll have to take it all over again.  Now, I'm sure you're all smart enough to figure out why I have gone so far as to explain these two specific structures, but I'm going to spell it out anyway.

The main issue with this mission is that the map is -always- the largest map in the game, and it -always- has two Fortresses and a Missile base in the same place.  The secondary issue with this map is that the two strongest suits in the game are present, the Musha Gundam and the Musha 2 Gundam (From Dynasty Warriors Gundam and Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 respectively) and always start -in- the Missile Base and always move -together-.  At ten-star hard mode difficulty, near any Ace Mobile Suit can wreck your shit but these two Gundams will especially rip your rectal cavity in half while it still exists in your body.  And the third issue is that, -somehow, someway- you will always lose your allied HQ before you can take any of the other essential fields which instantly depletes your Efficiency bar and prevents you from being able to redeploy.  (Granted, so does the loss of your HQ, but if you lose it with another essential base, it can be taken back without your gauge depleting completely)  Whether it's because somebody will catapult into the base and overwhelm it, or it'll just get hit by a fucking missile, you're going to lose your HQ and from then on, you're on your own.

I cannot tell you how many times I had to attempt this mission, but the number is definitely in the double-digits and it was an exceedingly infuriating exercise from start to finish.  I approached this, first, as a normal thing that was difficult, which I always take to with one simple solution:  Put Heero in the Wing Zero and set phasers to fucking genocide.  Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out a way for it to work because Heero and the Wing Zero both excel in Projectiles which, the map does not really afford you the leisure of using.  So, naturally I decided to go to the other extreme and switch to Milliardo Peacecraft (as you might tell, I do have a certain affinity to Gundam Wing, being the only Gundam I've actually watched and all) with the Epyon since it does not, in fact, have projectiles whatsoever and is thereby more Melee-focused, as is Milliardo himself.  It, uh....it didn't work either.  Unfortunately, the Musha Twins just gave me too much trouble.

So naturally, I went with the "If you can't beat them, join them" philosophy and threw Milliardo into my very own tricked-out Musha Gundam.  With Maxed out Attack and Defense (alongside other quite high stats) as well as other enhancements, I figured it would be no issue.  I was still incorrect as you might guess, so I just went with the only thing I -could- do and switched to another Pilot that would do what I wanted.  I'm not sure how much Pilot stats actually effect anything, but Milliardo excels in Melee at the cost of Shot while taking up a bit of slack in Defense.  It wasn't good enough, so I went with the only other guy who was an option at that point.  Domon Kasshu, the star of G-Gundam, the King of Hearts himself.

Domon's Shot stat is abysmal, but his Melee and Defense stats are basically on par with each other and even at level 43, Domon's Melee stat was higher than Milliardo's at level 50.  I spent the entirety of the G (money) I had left training him up and still only made it to about 46, and then took a couple missions just to scrape together G for a couple skills for him.  And then I threw him in my Musha Gundam and this is where I tell you that I destroyed shit, right?  Well, no.  Even with Domon powered up sufficiently and with a Musha Gundam that was a boss machine, it still took me about half a dozen tries before I managed to perform the 'Perfect Storm' required to beat it.  By some miracle, I managed to defeat the Musha Twins (thanks to Special Attacks and well-placed Attack Up item drops) and proceeded to take the Missile Base, followed by the two Fortresses that finally pushed the effectiveness of the enemy down enough to get the commander to drop down.

Knight Gundam is the Musha equivalent for Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3, so you'll understand why I was not surprised, yet still bothered, when it dropped down in the enemy HQ.  I'm not prepared to say it's -as- imposing as either Musha, especially when they're together, but Knight Gundam will still wreck your fucking day and move on, so it's not even like the worst was over when I beat the Musha Twins.  (Who, by the way, redeployed and proceeded to run amok, but away from me.)  Getting Knight Gundam to drop was the furthest I'd gotten in the mission during the half hour I spent slamming my head against the wall trying to beat it and thankfully I didn't have to make it that far a second time; the first time I got Knight Gundam to drop was the only time as I went into the base and kicked it down eventually.  It was very nerve-wracking as you might assume, and it has never been so satisfying to bellow "Ffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yoooooooooooooooou" at my TV as it was when I finally beat this mission.

So what else do I have to do before I actually get this Platinum trophy?  Quite simply, I just have to play 100 missions online which won't be as difficult as it will be tedious, but even that should hopefully be negated by the pure fact that I will be playing those missions online with friends, or at least people who are a step above 'random dude' that I'll get matched up with if I just dove into the Online mode with abandon.  I think the number 100 definitely requests that you do as much, but I'm simply not going to because after this, after this whole grind that I went through, I would like to remember what it's like to enjoy Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3.  So that is what I'm going to do.  Someday.

Progress Report - Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3

As I have often said and lamented in the past, the 'Warriors' line of games have a very japanese design in their trophy layout in that they just want you to squeeze every last drop of gameplay out of the thing before it tosses a bit of Platinum your way.  So with that in mind, as I have done in the past, I figure I should kinda air out my thoughts on Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 now that I'm 55 hours into it and knee-deep in "I just don't give a shit" anymore regarding some of the complaints I had.  Not that I've accepted them, I just don't care now; they don't even register in my head now that I have this goal of getting shit done because that is my focus now.  I want that 19th Platinum trophy for the non-existent Trophy Shelf in my Playstation Account's nebulous representation of these accomplishments.  Would've been a lot nicer if that Trophy Case thing for Home ever panned out but, well, it also would've been a lot nicer if a lot for Home had panned out properly.  But that's a whole other issue entirely.

Now, a good portion of the trophies has been, much like Dynasty Warriors 7, about collecting things.  Collecting Mobile Suits, Characters, Pilots (which is different than characters because some of the Characters are non-playable and only have an entry in the Gallery), Movies, Music and Sounds all have a trophy attached to it, I believe, and they've been pretty much easy to get.  No real going out of the way to get them, no dramatic goal that is, yes, part of another trophy but practically in its own league (Looking at you Consensus Builder), just things you'll get naturally.  That's been fairly nice at least.  Another one of those has been gathering all the licenses for the main Mobile Suits (of which, most are proper Gundams) so that anyone* can pilot them rather than just their intended pilot or pilots depending on the suit itself. 

*Anyone who is a Newtype/Cyber-Newtype at least, as some suits are Newtype specific.

The licenses are mostly useless from my perspective since if I like a suit, I generally like the Pilot as well (Gundam Wing Suits/Pilots minus Trowa, Char and his Zaku II, Domon and the Burning Gundam) and beyond that, the only reason to play as someone I didn't care for/didn't know was to get their license which required them being in their suit and not one that I bought for another suit.  That'll change now that I'm grinding for friendship and not licenses (have to use the suit five times before it's purchasable) and it'll be nicer to use my better suits with Pilots I don't generally care for, but that just makes the licenses for the Gundams I don't like double-useless.  Why would I use the V2 Gundam, for instance, when I have a much better Epyon that's just -right there- ready for me to use?  I wouldn't.  Nobody would.  Because the V2 is pretty terrible aside from a fairly spectacular special attack.

The real bone of contention I've found is with the structure of unlocking missions since it basically relies on other missions being unlocked which, in turn, require other missions to be unlocked.  To that end, I currently have no new missions.  Literally none that I have not completed save for one missions that I can see that is not unlocked because I have not completed all other missions.  The reason I don't have any new missions is because the ones I need are locked for whatever reason meaning that I have to do something before I unlock and do a mission that will invariably unlock another mission leaving me to then need to do something else for yet another mission to unlock more missions.  The bulk of the problems here is with the History missions as I need certain pilots to have a certain friendship level before I can do them or before they'll even show up for me to find out how I need to unlock them.  It's a cyclical problem that I seem to stumble across in several games and it never gets any less frustrating.

Regardless, I think that, working with relationships will basically fill in the rest of my game for me and considering that's the step I'm on, it should be easy enough to finish off.  Unfortunately, that won't be the end of it as there is the little matter of the Online Mode which requires you to actually play missions over the internet.  No workaround either, no setting up a private match and playing before your reserve slot comes in as those kills, that victory won't count towards the eventual 1,000 Shot Down and 100 completed missions you have to do for all the trophies.  I think I'm going to reserve those for a later day with a friend rather than working with some pubs about the internet for them.  So all in all, the road to being finished with Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 is technically pretty short or super long depending on how hard it'll be to up these remaining friendships.  Hopefully it'll go by quickly and then after that, I'll just have to wait til I can have a buddy work with me for 100 missions.  Which isn't a slog at all.

My Games of 2011, Part 1

So, the moment I've been dreading and anticipating is upon us, the actual 'let's quantify the unquantifiable with rankings' time of Game of the Year voting has been up on PA for a few days, but I've been doing a little research into one of the games on my list so that it could, in fact, make it on my list.  I'll explain when we get to it which should be tomorrow's post.  (Yes, I'm dragging it out over the days like I did originally, mostly because I've gotten a little more accustomed to doing this and might be a bit more verbose this year.)  Aside from the way I'll be handling the list in multiple posts, there are a few odd similarities with this year and last years list that have me a bit confused, though I suppose these things just happen.  Like last year, my list contains 12 games when I've worried for half this year that I wouldn't make 10, and of those 12 games, I've only physically played 10 of them, leaving me with two games that I feel I am knowledgeable enough to rate without having played them directly.

Neither of those games are in this post, however, so rest assured that I'm not simply grabbing two games and throwing them at the end to pad the list up.  Quite the opposite as they both scored fairly high for reasons that I'll get into when their number ticks up.  First up, however are four games that brought a range of opinions to the table, from disappointment to being impressed and from quick, satisfying romps to prolonged, satisfying, yet still unsettling sessions of a game whose length is measured in days, not hours.  I won't say that they 'earned' their spots on the list, because that implies that the games higher up 'earned' their spots as well and, with only a couple exceptions, they're basically numbered by happenstance and is not indicative of overall quality.  So, of course, with the first game on the list, I'm going to go right against that and speak directly to its (lack of) quality.

12. Pokemon White (and Black)

I've said it a few times before, and I'll likely say it several more times before all is said and done, but I did not like Pokemon White.  For what had been all but billed as a reboot of the franchise, willing to make all sorts of much-needed changes to the 'formula', White proved to be 'yet another pokemon game', doing absolutely nothing that the hype attached to it which was rather unfortunate as you might guess.  Even though it was all 'different' it was all the same and that's certainly not a step in the right direction for a game that has the possibilities and potential as the Pokemon series.  So this would be the real disappointment on my list and, were it not a game that I obviously liked despite everything I hated about it it wouldn't be on my list period.  Regardless, its spot on the list ensures that I'll get to air out all of my concerns and complaints.

As I said, the thing that bothers me is just how much White is the same as everything that came before it.  Same stupid storyline with a kid going out to index pokemon for a professor who has a bunch of aides but instead chooses to rely on a plucky tween from the same knowledge, same stupid plot hook of Team (Word) being stupid and eventually getting their crap kicked in by said tween, and same "Go here, challenge gym, win, move on, repeat" formula that certainly drives the game forward, but in a rather shoddy way nowadays.  Even all of the 'new' pokemon that they stated with vehemence that you had to use, as no other pokemon from previous iterations would be available prior to beating the game (which was instantly disproved by the existence of the Dream World which sent me a Farfetch'd before my third badge I believe) had very obvious roots into the design of pokemon past.  The same Fire, Water, and Grass starters, the obvious Pidgey-line, the obvious Geodude-line, etc. etc. were all present and accounted for, as were the fuck-off instant-run Legendaries that haven't been a good idea for three versions of Pokemon and do not change in that.

The other issue at hand, and this is the one that I really, really take issue with, is Team Plasma.  Not only do they mark a continuance of relying on a plot hook that's been tired for a long time, but they manage to be the single dumbest thing to ever grace a Pokemon game and possibly DS games in general.  There's spoilers here, but they're mild because who plays Pokemon for the story, honestly.  Anyways, the message Team Plasma is trying to spread is that Pokemon Trainers are committing unspeakable evils by using pokemon to fight battles for nothing more than pride and profit, which is okay enough of a message I guess.  Where it's muddled is how Team Plasma uses pokemon to fight trainer pokemon to convince the trainer that they're stronger so the trainer should release their pokemon.  Just mull that over a bit - Team Plasma uses pokemon battling to promote anti-pokemon battling beliefs.  Yeah.

Still, I enjoyed Pokemon White as I enjoy any pokemon game; it was fun building a team and getting across the various gym challenges and I was more than happy to start meta-planning super teams, but eventually I just got tired.  It's the same thing I've been doing since Pokemon Red and unless there's an actual change of form between Black/White and the next iteration (not the inevitable Grey version), it'll be the last time I'll bother with it.  Of course, I'm lying, but when I play the next iteration, if it's the same old thing, I just won't even bother to mention it.

11. Sonic Generations

I just recently went through Sonic Generations, so I'm fairly convinced that I know where I wanted to place it, and while I'm comfortable with where it's at I am a bit surprised.  There's very little about Sonic Generations that I disliked and, in fact, quite a lot that I liked about it.  So why is it so low on my list?  I suspect it has something to do with just how short it is and while it manages to impress, it doesn't stick to you.  I can't call it forgettable because that would just be dishonest, since it's very memorable if just because of all the neat versions of stages that are brand new, as well as faithful recreations of others.  Generations has the most consistently good gameplay of any Sonic game for a long time, as it takes the best part of the last 'good' (or at least not absolutely terrible) Sonic Game, Sonic Unleashed (though Sonic Colors is supposed to be rather good as well), in the form of just straight-forward speed-focused maps (from Daylight Sonic, obviously) and makes a game out of it without bogging it down with something unnecessary.

Really, though, Sonic Generations -did- need a little bit more of something.  Sure, you have all sorts of challenges as optional content that will likely add quite a few hours to your total time if you should go for it, but there's very little reward for doing any of it.  Getting Red Rings unlocks artwork of designs from previous Sonic games which is nice and all, but hardly locked to the game itself.  Beating the challenge levels gives you a bit of e-cred, I suppose, if your time is fast enough, and every level has a bell associated with it that'll get you a song to play during other stages or yet more artwork.  But it's all just stuff that's sort of there in the literal backroom of the game that you could very well go through the entirety of the game and not see a bit of it.  I guess what's to be said of it is that it was designed for replayability to be a main factor of your enjoyment, since there's always ways to get a better ranking and a better time on those levels, so it's all up to you to do it.

10. Shadows of the Damned

Shadows of the Damned provided me quite a bit of surprise when I started it up, some welcome and some less so, but nothing overwhelming either way.  After changing the controls to something not-terrible and reminiscent of Resident Evil 4 (which renders the first part of that sentence redundant), I was able to actually play Shadows of the Damned and even grow to enjoy it as I ran through the initial sections of the game.  I became increasingly impressed with how the game opened up to you, very subtly guiding you along its paths and teaching you how to play with the tools it offered in a surprisingly intuitive way that eschewed conventional 'kill 'em with tutorials' methods which was a rather welcome relief.  There was unfortunately a drop-off directly after I came here and sang its praises for doing just what it stopped doing directly after I said it was doing it.

An area that was fraught with things that made the game quite different than it had been reared its ugly head, complete with unintuitive bosses, instant deaths everywhere, and frustratingly difficult sections stemming from those two factors.  While I'm fairly confident that that cleared up directly after, as I touched into an area following that and was met with quite a lot of weirdness and comedy (Johnson and the pay phone, for those of you who've played) that wasn't too bad, I still can't really forget that the game essentially 'fooled' me, or that I think it did with how that whole thing worked out.  Afterwards, I learned a few things that would've been much nicer to know prior to being past them already, which only suggests that the intuitiveness of the first real boss fight was long gone and the game suffered for it.  It is rather unfortunate that I'm gauging this game while not having actually beaten it, and it's possible that I'll sort of change my stance on it sometime down the road for the better, where it's at right now is fine enough I think.  Remember, it might be '10th', but that doesn't mean I think 9 and above are better, just that they struck more chords with me that I had to consider them more.

9. Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3

The last game in this section of my GotY list is a game you've no doubt noticed I've whinged about on a fair few occasions.  I just plain don't like the map design and I think the way that story was handled on top of that was fairly poor.  That hinders the way that not only the original story can be told, but also the way the 'historical' accounts (read:  storylines from the anime) which bothers me quite a bit.  However, what the game annoys with in terms of poor design, it makes up for with simple quantity of quality Mobile Suits and pilots that will certainly grow into the next iteration as well.  Having the choice of being able to pilot Wing Zero, Epyon and Deathscythe Hell is honestly a little thing, but it's such a big thing for me and it makes me genuinely excited for the prospect of playing it again every time I load it up.  Not only that, but the chance to eventually get silly by hopping into a Ball or a Gouf or a Zaku II and destroying on a wide scale is tantalizing.

I'm honestly a big fan of the Dynasty Warriors style of run around and wreck stuff, which I'm sure you're all familiar with by now, so having it on my list should come as no surprise.  And while some will argue that the 'quality' of the gameplay is not there, or is at least dwarfed by that found in Shadows of the Damned or Sonic Generations, I say it's the gameplay that strikes more with me, hence its spot.  Quite simply, being able to store up Special Attack gauges for Wing Zero's Beam Cannon and then blasting hundreds of dummy suits to oblivion in a snap via a broad swath of destruction is something that cannot and will not get old no matter how many times I do it.  Similarly so with DeathScythe Hell's simple slice-through attack; strong enough to demolish most Mobile Suits with that single strike he makes, it's quite entertaining to unleash on someone intent on ruining your day.

So that's 12 to 9 for my Games of the Year 2011.  It was rather difficult actually getting the list put together as I've inferred, and three of these four games were fairly difficult to place, but I'm pretty happy with how it is.  Again, by no means does a game's spot at number 9 mean that I think the game at number 5 is objectively better, but when presented with numbers to assign, that's just kind of what you have to do.  Tomorrow will obviously bring numbers 8 to 5 and hopefully will be a little easier to write than tonights, though I suspect it won't.

Weekly Wrap-Up in Gaming - January 2 - January 8

Hey, I haven't done one of these in a while, mostly because I have barely had a week where I played more than one game for a reliably quantifiable amount of time, but that is not a concern for this week.  So let's get right into it, since I actually have a bounty of games to discuss!

First up is a game that hasn't gotten a lot of play since I decided I wanted to play games that didn't involve me walking around a given area and slaughtering things in the thousands with the greatest of ease.  I'll get back into Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 eventually obviously, but for now, it's best to expand my gaming horizons into games that won't eat 100 hours of my life and yet demand more.  Still, I'm not quite sure as to where I stand on DWG3 since I want to love it and I think that, through that want, I will, but I worry whether or not that will be genuine or based on enough factors to be wholly founded.  Basically, the game wins by allowing me my choice between Epyon, DeathScythe Hell and Wing Zero alone, whereas the rest of the Gundams Mobile Suits are more or less Icing on the cake.  Unless they suck.  Like The O sucks.  Because IT STILL SUCKS harglebargle.

After playing a few more history missions (and being assured through the trophy list that there are several, several more) I'm a little more prepared to suggest they actually did remember how to meld story with DWG3 however fleetingly, and while I obviously would've preferred a larger footprint I'll take what I can get.  At the same time, for as much as I griped and whinged about them in DWG1/2, I miss the story missions that actually have goals and story elements in them.  Even if I have to save Kamille's useless ass from Yazan when they're on the friggin' other side of the map are you kidding me, it was -something- as opposed to the Blitzkreig DWG3 more or less imposes as its pace.  You capture fields and if you don't do that, you probably lose and that's all there is to that.  Sure, you might have to save one pilot from two pilots if that random objective pops up, but it's nothing beyond a forced flavor element that detracts more than it adds.

Regardless, I just like the way DWG3 handles, which is to say that I liked the way DWG2 handled, past-tense, and I really don't think a lot has been changed up for DWG3.  I'll have to check, but I'm fairly certain that the Qubeleys in DWG3 still don't have unique movesets which is patently ridiculous as there's four different models of them (which are basically recolors:  Haman Karn's is white, Puru's is blue, Puru Two's is red and the Mass-Produced is either black or the same color blue as Puru's) and I'd suspect that at least one of them would fight differently than the others.  Granted, the case could be made for Puru/Puru Two/Mass-Produced as they're likely based off one another (or the Mass-Produced is based off Haman), but Haman, at least, should have a friggin' different Qubeley moveset.  Again, I haven't tested, but I highly doubt it which is double-silly considering they added more Gundams Mobile Suits to the game and -they- have different movesets than others, s'far as I can tell.

I'd like to say I have enough integrity to consider giving DWG4 a peek before buying it, but that just won't happen.  I love me some giant robot carnage and will do whatever I can to support it in the (potentially vain) hopes that that support will actually ensure a quality product.  Which is not to say that DWG3 is -not- quality, but merely to suggest that DWG2 -was- a quality product and DWG3 is not its predecessor.  So take that as you will, but be assured that I do not dislike the game, even though I may vocally grudge it for not being as awesome as I could hope for.  Which, hey, this is a thing we all do for various games for various reasons, so this is nothing new of course.

Shadows of the Damned, for a while there on the day after I gave it such a glowing first impression, gave me pause in my thoughts and lead me to think that perhaps I had spoken too soon on its intuitiveness.  Pretty much directly after the section I passed in my initial playings, I ran into a section with a mid-boss (well, a few mid-bosses....that were the same mid-boss.  I'm sure people who have played it know what I mean) that literally stumped me on how I was supposed to kill it.  You know those times when you're playing a game and nothing seems to be working, so you say to yourself "Maybe I'm not supposed to win this" and give up, hoping to advance?  That almost happened because I gave this boss my all only to find nothing effective....until I tried a specific thing for a second time and it worked from there on out.  I suppose I simply missed my shot the first time, but it was no less frustrating.

What was doubly frustrating was that the game made the classic mistake of taking a bullshit boss like that and re-introducing it at a fairly beefed up pace.  Without giving too much away, let me just say that the thing that makes this boss fairly shit is its usage of the tried and true 'shadow clone' mechanic which means there are several of these things yet only one takes damage.  And if you take too long finding the real one because you're plugging away at the fake, it just respawns all the clones (which number up to about 7 or 9 in the second fight.  Or at least, that's what it seemed like)  As you can no doubt figure out for yourself, I was quite annoyed with that, but kept through it and I seem to have been rewarded for my efforts.  The section after that has been fairly enjoyable and, er....'visually entertaining', I'll say, so I suspect that was more a bump in the road rather than a foreboding omen of what's yet to come.  Still, I did stop playing the game a few days ago so I could jump into the next game I'm discussing.

Since bumps in the road is something I just brought up, I'm just going to start this off by saying this thusly:  The penultimate boss in Sonic Generations is awful.  Some of the challenge missions are just awful.  The good news is that that's about all that is awful, however, meaning they are merely bumps in the overall road of Sonic Generations.  I actually really liked the final boss despite it being literally set up as a moment seemingly ripped directly from Dragon Ball Z and no I'm not going to elaborate on that whatsoever.  It was a fun little jaunt through a world that had been little more than a laughing stock for far too long, and a beacon of hope that suggests, perhaps, future installments of the franchise could reach this level of goodness.  Or at least keep the good:bad ratio as far on the good side as Generations managed to do.

I guess 'fun little jaunt' is the best way to describe it as well, as it was quite short obviously.  There's still hours left in the game to squeeze out if I should so desire from challenge maps and Red Ring collection, but I'm really not up for that.  Not only are the Red Rings difficult to get, there's not really a 'do-over' for them; if you miss one, you have to do the whole level over again and get to that point once more and try again.  Collectible artwork is nice, of course, but I'm honestly not too fussed.  After all, I could always find the material on the internet like that.  Seeing as that is one of the few trophies that seem a little too much effort/frustration for me to even think about, I'm not planning on Platinuming the game which means that since I've beaten it, I can comfortably shelve it.  It was nice while it lasted and I'll remember it fondly, but I don't need to wring every single thing out of every single game I come across.  To do so woould mean that I simply wouldn't enjoy games anymore which is a prospect far too frightening to consider.

The last world I've returned to is that of Harvest Moon DS's, nestled in the valley near Mineral Town which will remain the best Harvest Moon town for quite some while I suspect.  My issues in Harvest Moon DS are numerous, but so are my praises so it kind of balances out in a way that leaves me grumbling while I compulsively play it for hours on end.  While I suspect my stay will be limited in that I won't even bother to get up to the inevitable marriage that is the goal of 98% of the people who play Harvest Moon games, it'll tide me over for my portable fix while I wait for the Vita with bated breath.  Unfortunately, my PSP hasn't gotten any better and it's just a chore to play on, so with any luck, we'll get the UMD passport system in America when the Vita launches and Squeenix will actually support the thing, meaning I can just buy a license for Final Fantasy Tactics:  War of the Lions and continue playing it on there.  (Possibly taking advantage of the screenshot feature if at all possible.)  If not, well, I can still buy it I guess, it's only $10 after all, but still.

My main problems with Harvest Moon DS lie within the characters and the way buildings are handled.  The characters in Forget-Me-Not Valley (I think that's what it's called) are rather largely dull and lifeless even though they might have visually interesting designs, though that's not necessarily true for all of them.  The marryable girls all have their own quirks that are wonderful or terrible depending on your position and have been the only thing to elicit more than a bored "Hmm" from me when talking to them.  I'm supposed to care that the resident Doctor is like a cyborg or something, but I really don't.  Or that there's a Mad Scientist in town with a mermaid in his basement, but I still don't.  I guess it might be an issue of underexposure, but I could put that on the game itself as well.

The other issue is that, for rather asinine reasons, you can choose to make the buildings you populate your farmland with out of different materials to ensure varying levels of structural integrity, meaning the threat of your buildings falling down is ever looming unless you build them all with Golden Lumber which is, you guessed it, ridiculously prohibitively expensive.  Even the 'best' option of Stone is prohibitively costly and while you have the option of providing the building materials yourself to reduce the cost, there's not exactly a store of rocks around for you to crush for the raw stone in something quantifiable.  There are three rocks that spawn every day near the mine that are worth a whopping three stone each (if you have the fourth tiered Hammer) and bigger rocks here and there that assuredly give you more stone for smashing them (perhaps, gasp, four or five), but they require the best Hammer in the game which requires you to go down to the bottom of a 255 level mine, clearing its entirety of monsters, initiating an event to unlock the third mine that's even deeper, finding the cursed version of the tool you want, and then getting it blessed by a priest over the phone for 10,000 money.  (It's G in the game, but screw that noise)  It's a rather....intensive process that I don't care to bother with.

So, as you can see, it's been a rather busy week for once, and I've been enjoying every moment of it aside from the moments that I very clearly stated I didn't enjoy.  Which were few and far between, of course, meaning that my assertion that it was a good week stands firm.  It feels good to be able to do one of these again, so here's hoping the next one isn't, y'know, months from now. 

Giant Robot On: Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3

I decided to put my pursuit of a Platinum Trophy in Dynasty Warriors 7 Xtreme Legends on hold in the name of a little variety in my gaming so have instead decided to start playing......Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 instead.  Yes, I understand the thought process is a little wonked on principle, but they are in all honesty different games insomuch as two FPS games are different games:  One can argue that all you're doing is running around and shooting things in the first-person perspective, but there are fundamental differences regardless.  I'd argue the Dynasty Warriors Gundam games are as different than other Warriors games than they could be and have in fact made that argument, but I'm sure that falls on a lot of deaf ears.  And in fact, DWG3 might actually be a little closer to the other Warriors games than the previous two incarnations have been, which I'm not sure how I feel about yet.

The previous two DWG games have been all about utilizing Dash properly; and by properly I mean dash all of the times.  Said wackily to accentuate just how many times you want to dash, because the correct answer is a lot.  This was a vital tool in DWG1 since it was the great equalizer with the characters and Gundams present, though this was a little downplayed in DWG2 with the change to the dash attack system but it was still fairly viable and it remains viable in DWG3....In theory at least.  I'm not sure what the difference is between DWG2 and 3, but the fodder seems to be more resistant to mass dash slashing which is...quite unfortunate as you can imagine.  This might be early-game-only as well, considering the way they've handled Gundams is a bit different so everyone starts off quite a bit weaker than I imagine they did in DWG2, but my initial impressions were put a bit off by this.

Before moving on, I should explain how they're handling Gundams Mobile Suits this time around to instantly clear up how they could be a bit weaker.  You see, before the Gundams Mobile Suits and the Pilots both were more or less constants that you improved on which worked and made sense, whereas this time around the Mobile Suits are....almost disposable, really.  Getting a hold of the Plans for one (previously Parts) is no longer a momentous occasion, but a possibility of a future annoyance because every set of Plans is for a whole version of that Mobile Suit that you have to pay to build.  Doing this, you can have up to four different versions of a single Mobile Suit before you have to sell one to clear up space.  Doing this makes them feel a bit interchangeable and cheap which I'm not a fan of; they seem treated more like actual weapons to be judged and placed rather than vehicles to be improved upon and fine-tuned.  This is pretty much counter to what is established everywhere and feels like they were looking for a better system, couldn't figure out one and just threw in something else so as to not be called out as a rehash of DWG2.

Several times while playing now, I've asked myself whether or not if I would prefer that DWG3 is more of a rehash of 2 than it is - specifically because both games are very easily different in important ways and I'm not sure that 3 carried over enough of the important things.  For one:  Map design.  If you'll refer to the picture above, you'll see the mini-map in the upper right corner of the screen and see that the map literally consists of giant boxes with little pathways between them.  If you judge that against this image from Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2, you'll see a mini-map of a map that is far more organic and if you trust my word, you'll know that DWG2's maps are far more varied than the fare offered with DWG3.  It's really unfortunate that the map design is so simple, purely because I honestly cannot figure as to why it -is- as simple as it is.  Yet every new map I've encountered is a bunch of boxes inter-connected with little pathways and is inexplicably terrible.  If anything, I guess this is to accentuate the greater focus on Fields, but I don't think you have to make the entire map consist of boxes for that and would in fact argue against it in any case presentable.

Another strike against it in the department of map design is the simple fact that I have not found one map that takes place in outer space.  As in, open space like DWG1 and 2 feature quite frequently.  Mobile suits fly, sometimes through space.  This is simply a fact that DWG3, I think, wants us to forget in favor of....I don't know what, really.  And while outer space levels didn't fundamentally change -anything- in DWG1 or 2 (other than looking neat) since the vertical space was not utilized in any fashion other than flavor, it still carried flavor and that is sorely lacking in DWG3 in...most every form.  Of course, this is all opinion derived from playing the game for only a handful of hours, having only dipped in, really, to two of the many, many pilots and just a handful of the many, many Gundams, so it's entirely possible that there is quite more variety to be found in the departments I've been complaining about elsewhere.

What Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 does do and do quite effectively is to better integrate Mission Mode than DWG2 did, so that you feel like it is an actual mode with depth at start-up rather than when you've bothered to give it a try after exploring the stories available.  Of course, the way this is done completely cancels out the praise it's earned because in doing what they've done, they more or less eschewed the Stories with prejudice.  There are still missions that deal with stories not only from the original series (As in, missions that put you in the shoes of Amuro Ray while he takes on Ramba Ral and the like of that nature) but the actual story of DWG3, but with the cut-and-dry mission-based style they've taken, everything with anything resembling impact has more or less been stripped away, leaving us to feast on the scraps told through messages in the Terminal.

From what I can tell, there are a few different arching stories for DWG3 that tells the overall story from different viewpoints.  Which means that certain characters are just in a group and they get -that story- which is -the story- they can play through.  This open-ended application is more or less why anything personalized has been stripped from the missions themselves so that every mission becomes "Capture fields, reduce enemy efficiency to zero, kill boss" with absolutely nothing beyond vapid chatter in between.  No story has really been conveyed during a mission and if it has, I've completely missed out on it.  I think I've seen maybe two cutscenes as well which look -wonderful- thanks to the new art style but are ultimately as pointless as you might have been alluded to think they are. 

As I said before, all the 'Story' is told through messages in the terminal where you get all your information in an e-mail like way.  Messages such as "Heero Yuy is now available as an Operator." and random messages from some of the various characters that serve only as vessels to explain that you are now able to form friendships with these characters are the bulk of the purpose here, as it was in Mission Mode from DWG2 itself, but now anything story-centric has an "!" at the start of it letting you know that it is, indeed, important.  Opening those will bring up talking heads (well, portraits) and dialogue that is neither helpful nor entertaining, nor voiced and generally end with you being able to play more story missions.  It is unsatisfying, completely and utterly, and kills any and all desire I have to try and understand the piecemeal story they've tried throwing together as an excuse to have all these robots and pilots in the same vicinity.

Regardless, I'm really really enjoying the game, and I'm sure with the way it's going to open up (as I've only been dealing with one story currently, first as Amuro then as Heero by my own choice) that I'll get used to the way it's presented, but I'm not sure I'll ever really want it the way it is.  Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 was fantastic and set the bar really high, and I suspect the idea with 3 was more to test out the new art style (which probably required a new graphics engine or something) and the online features so that with 4, they'll be able to bring it back up to that standard in a newer, better way.  At least that's what I'm being optimistic about, since I can't imagine there's a way for them to go a step -backwards- from DWG3 unless they strip any semblance of a story from it or disclude some of the Pilots or Mobile Suits they've put in so far.  I guess my big thing that's been bouncing around in my head is that with most games you can generally eschew the game that came before it for the new model (though you can still go back to it fondly), but with DWG2 and 3, I'd suggest you play them side-by-side for the best experience which is something that isn't said a lot.

Merry Christmas! - The Haul

Now, we all like Christmas for various reasons, whether it's for the time with family, the great meals, simply getting a day off of work (In most cases), or a combination of all those reasons or something else.  But we all enjoy presents, all of us, and almost better than getting the presents is being able to talk about just what you got.  Not to gloat, of course, but just to show off the excitement we feel in getting something we wanted without parting with sweet sweet cash to do so.  It is a time-honored tradition after all, of talking about presents that you get, whether it be for your birthday, holiday or some other occasion; mostly because it's in answer to someone inquiring about your gains.

So to answer the question that wasn't asked here, I got quite a nice haul between my parents and siblings and couldn't be happier.  Honestly, I probably got a little too much, but I certainly can't complain nor do I intend to.  Nor will I suggest that I deserve it all, but it has been a fairly rough year so getting what I got was quite nice, not to mention that my actual Christmas day went quite a lot better than I had expected.  Without saying too much on it, my family hasn't all been in the best state this year (Which is part of why it's been a rough year, but not near the full reason) but we managed to get together today and really mend fences and be...well, a family for once and it was nice.  I was quite surprised by that really, and while the cynic in me is being cynical, I'm just going to roll with it.

I got a few games this year which were the main highlight obviously, but the above-pictured Sonic Generations was the real surprise here.  Three of the games I got, Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3, Fist of the North Star:  Ken's Rage (Two more Warriors-esque games?  I'm obviously a madman) and Shadows of the Damned (in preparation for Lollipop Chainsaw of course), I knew about before Christmas unfortunately as I had to take part in ordering them since folks in my family aren't too well-versed in computer things and the first two games are fairly difficult to find in store.  Ken's Rage and Shadows were both used (only option, unfortunately) so they didn't cost a lot thankfully and I'm just glad to have them, but as I said the element of surprise had been lost on them.

When I went to GameStop with my dad to fix a screw-up with a present for my nephews (more online ordering, got a pretty bad case/game, managed to swap the game) and he not-so-subtly sent me back to the car while remaining, it was fairly obvious that there was at least something else in store.  Being an over-analytical ass, I saw some white in the bag that he carried out and (correctly) deduced that it was Assassin's Creed:  Brotherhood as it had been on my list, which again ruined a bit of the surprise.  But I couldn't tell if there was anything in that bag which sparked the fire of wonderment; really I think that's half the fun of Christmas presents, wondering just what they are.  At the top of my list of possible suspects were Alpha Protocol or Mass Effect 2 for PS3 which are both, thankfully, a mere $20 a piece and just one of them would have been more than enough. 

So as you can see, Sonic Generations completely and happily took me by surprise and I found myself in the delightful quandary of trying to decide between playing DWG3, Sonic Generations or AssBro.  It's a lucky dilemma to be in, let me tell you, and one I don't take lightly.  DWG3 won out, as I loved DWG2 dearly despite not playing enough of it, and as such I've been excited for DWG3 for quite a while.  At face value from a few hours of playing it I am a bit...conflicted, actually.  But that's exactly how I felt between the original and the sequel, so I figure it just takes a little bit of time to get used to how this one works.  If nothing else, I'm sure the new mobile suits and pilots will be enough to make me love the game (especially since I believe Duo Maxwell and Deathscythe made the cut) and can't wait to really get into it.

The other big thing would be the dearth of Gift Cards to GameStop that I received from just about all sides, meaning that my expectations for February's finances just got a whole lot easier.  To say that I got more than I expected is quite the understatement as I saw a figure on a list that was obviously for me because my dad is....not very good at being sneaky with such things.  This completely neglected to factor in my siblings adding to that total (as I didn't figure they would) or the idea that my dad could, er....forget that he bought the amount he was supposed to get for me and buy it again.  The first, I could probably think on, but the latter, well....that was just one of those happy accidents that never ever happen, I'd say.  And I am quite happy with the fact that it did of course.

It was really a very Merry Christmas over here as you can tell, and I hope you all have had equally wonderful Holidays.

Giant Robot On: Gundam Wing

Gundam Wing.  If this was not the coolest thing around when you were a kid, you simply had a wrong childhood.  At least, that's what anyone who was a kid in America in 2000 will tell you; since that's when we first got Gundam Wing.  It, alongside Dragon Ball Z (which was also hot around the same time, thank you Toonami) simply helped reaffirm everything we'd already learned growing up with the Power Rangers.

Fighting is cool.  Giant Robots are cool.  Fighting -in- Giant Robots?  Yeah.  That's where it's at, son.

Squeeeee.

As most, well, cartoons of any sort, all semblance of plot is nonsense, but strong enough to carry a narrative outside of all the awesome battles.  In the future, when mankind has begun sending people into space to live, everyone on Earth sort of bands together into the United Earth Sphere Alliance to create a super-nation across borders, across oceans, promoting peaceful coexisting and the like.  Well, more like, they stopped fighting each other, because they took to picking on the people living in the Space Colonies.  Since the Earth has all the military and the colonists have nothing, it's easy to make sure the colonies do everything the Earth wants and, unsurprisingly, this doesn't sit well.

When their pacifist leader gets assassinated, the space colonists just kind of take it, I guess.  Eventually the Alliance's Elite, The Organization of the Zodiac are created for reasons I can't quite remember.

Or....something like that.

Five scientists.  Five Gundams.  Five pilots.  This is not the best rebel alliance.

Basically, in what amounts to the most un-coordinated Scientific Effort ever, five different scientists agree to create five different Gundams (the giant robots made of Gundanium alloy, which is really durable and apparently in great supply) without any input from one another.  Then they get five different teenaged boys, train them in their own way, and send them down to Earth to attack the Alliance directly, destroying their weapons so they can't fight anymore.  None of the five are informed that there are four more of them working to the same end.  I guess, the scientists figured they might get captured?  Maybe the plan is to make it seem like there's just a lot of them, or something and when the boys can't say there's others because they don't know about it, chaos ensues.  I don't know.

Anyways, the five Gundams fighting with the Organization of the Zodiac is the prime focus anyway; dudes in super impressive Robots fighting other dudes in super impressive robots.  Heero Yuy, Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton, Quatre Raberba Winner (Nobody called him this.  Why he has more than just 'Quatre' as his name is beyond me.), and Chang Wufei were these five Gundam Pilots sent to fight the entire United Earth Sphere Alliance army by themselves, and every day, we would watch and see their success.

Though memory of the actual show might be fleeting, specific moments will never cease to cause bouts of nostalgia.

Remember the time Heero fell down that cliff, broke his arm and then reset it by himself?

Remember how Zero system drove three different people absolutely crazy when they used it?

Remember when they made DeathScythe -even cooler-?

Remember how Heero and Milliardo always fought, like seriously, all the time?

Yeah.  You remember.

If you don't, by all means, go, see this series, it's only 49 episodes.  That's only about 17 hours of your life.  Think of all the other times you've said, "There's an hour of my life I'll never get back," or, "Why did I sit here and play this for ten hours, I don't even like it".  Don't you wish you could say, "Hey.  Remember that time I watched every single episode of Gundam Wing and had a hella fun time watching Giant Robots fight each other?

Yeah.  Yeah, I do.  Those were good times."

I miss my Epyon model.

Giant Robot On: Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2

So, lately, I've been playing this.  Like, a lot.  I am an avid fan of the Warriors franchise and have been for some time because when you get right down to it, sometimes you're just in the mood to cause carnage on a wide scale.  Few games manage to do that while still giving you character variety like the Warriors games do.

Dynasty Warriors Gundam (referred to as DWG from here on out) is a bit of a weird one for me, however.  I loved Gundam growing up, but never really saw that much.  I saw a good bit of Gundam Wing (as anyone who was 13 when Toonami was around did) and I partook of a few other series installments, but never more than bite-sizes, something I've long sought to rectify but never really got around to.

It's a bit weird, playing it right after finishing a mini-marathon of the first DWG.  A lot of things are changed; some for the better, some, I'm kind of iffy on.  I don't want to say the combat in DWG was 'restrictive' or that it wasn't unique, character to character, because it wasn't and it was (respectively), but every character, even if they sucked (See:  The O) could fall back on the Charge-Dash combo.  You attack, do a charge attack, and interrupt with a dash that does damage, on top of allowing three hits and a shot.  In DWG2, this is changed a bit; it's executed the same, but every final shot is a charge now.  Which, on one hand, allows for chaining of this combo, but on the other hand, slightly wrecks the flow created by the first game.  It's disorienting, to say the least, and some of the charge attacks simply aren't worth it. (See:  Gundam Mark II.  Yes, that's an impressive bazooka, but not when you have to lug it out, boy-o.)

Another big difference being the, essentially, two story modes in DWG.  Every character that you could play, got an Original Mode story.  Only a select few were eligible for an Official Mode, which pulled right from their respective series.  Among them:  Amuro Ray, Char Aznable, Judau Ashta, Kamille Bidan, Haman Karn, and Paptimus Scirocco.  Only three of those were available from the start, with the remaining three as unlocks.  A couple of them were also, in fact, fairly short, consisting of only two or three missions.  In contrast, DWG2 also only features six official modes, but two of them are simply Amuro Ray and Char Aznable versions of Char's Counterattack which is all of two missions.  However, the four remaining Official modes were roughly the same in length; each of them being as long as the longest in DWG (from what I remember)

So, that part is mostly a wash.  What's less approachable for me at this point, however, is DWG2's lack of Original Mode, featuring, instead, "Mission Mode" which I have admittedly not gone too deep into.  At first, I didn't think it would be quite an adequate replacement; but the inclusion of (to my reckoning) around two dozen more robots to pilot quelled any qualms I had with it.  And even after a cursory go with it, I'm not prepared to write it off yet, as the 'story' missions do seem to be catered specifically to the characters.  My only complaint is that it seems set up poorly for what is essentially another storyline, if that's their intent.  Especially since there's five(?) categories of missions; it's easy to move on to the more Simulation-like ones (dealing with Pilot friendships and with parts and the acquiring/upgrading thereof) or simply move on to another character because you don't quite grasp how to unlock your story missions.  (Hint:  Check the terminal for messages).

What you end up is one of those situations where there's a really strong pull to both titles, which, at its core, simply says that both games are fairly good.  And they are, provided you're into this sort of thing.  I just hope DWG3 takes the short-comings of both games (DWGs: lack of a great number of Gundams/Pilots, DWG2s: lack of properly copying DWG1, still missing Gundams/Pilots) and improves on them, along with all the rest of the good things they're doing.  (Namely, Online Co-Op and a very, very nice art style that likens it more to the series of which the games are based, rather than the style they've had for the first two, which wasn't bad either.)

I don't believe I've finished with DWG2, as I've said, so I can't offer a full verdict, but I hope when I'm ready that I can call it, more or less, a complete improvement over the first.  Because it's honestly close, they just really need to convince me with Mission Mode.  So we'll see!

Update!
After spending a good portion of the day on Heero's Mission Mode, I am prepared to say that Mission Mode adds a depth to the game that I couldn't even consider it would.  A few hours today, and I didn't even play one story mission; I simply went through all sorts of Free, License and Friendship missions.  While a storyline in all of it is paper-thin at best, I've got a few friends, I joined a faction (The Titans, which, initially, I was like "Ew, Scirocco" but then I remembered that Kamille is part of the AUEG, so it means I get so smash him a lot.  This is good.