Well, That Was Short-Lived

I would like to start off by saying that I'm sorry.  Kind of.  I'm sorry if, after my faint praise of the game and its low, low sale price were enticing enough for you to have bought the game, then I apologize.  Not because Touch My Katamari eventually turns into a game that lives and breathes on punching you in the dick and laughing at your torment or anything, no.  In fact, it's very fair and when you unlock the Eternal Modes for the levels, it's quite enjoyable indeed.  Fundamentally, there's not a whole lot wrong with the game part of the game if you don't count the fact that it's kind of short.  There is something, however, that is one of those naturally terrible things that just grate on me because it screams of design that you should never ever ever incorporate into a game.  Ever.

The currency of the game world in Touch My Katamari is Candy.  You get candies for finishing requests (based on your performance), for buying things for the King (never as many as you spent) and for playing every day.  That last one is the key - playing a few days in a row will only get you a couple to a handful of candies, whereas a full ten days in a row and thereafter will get you 256 candies simply for loading up the game.  That seems like a lot, right?  It does.  Until you learn that everything costs thousands of candies.  Some of it is the low thousands so it's not -bad-, since you're earning a couple hundred easy from requests anyway (so long as you're not getting really low scores, which you -won't- in Eternal because you'll be rolling all of the things), but it's still a bit of a slog to buy everything.  Even utilizing Candy Tickets, which multiply your candies earned in a request by 2, then 4, then 8 (if you use three at a time) won't get you a -lot-, but it'll get you a good amount towards buying things.

And if you want all the dozen trophies that Touch My Katamari has to offer, then you're going to have to buy all the things.  Specifically all of the music (you'll want to anyway, the music is more or less pretty good) and all the King's clothes, which is where the issue is.  You see, the upper echelon of outfits for the King's wardrobe will cost in the high thousands per piece meaning you're kind of stuck playing the levels over and over and over and over again...which is fine in theory.  Either that or, if you're going for the mega secret ultimate hidden item, which is literally a golden poop soft-serve that costs a grand 76,500 Candies which is...far more than the rest of the items in the game combined.  By quite a wide margin.  Given that your biggest get for a single level using three candy tickets if you finish off all the bonus things in the same level (which are one-time-only affairs) is probably somewhere around 1,000-1,400 candies.  Maybe.  For about 15-20 minutes playtime.  You....can see how this will end up being a sort of a problem.

This is where that bit about the 256 candies per day comes into play.  See, the silly thing about Touch My Katamari is that, even though there's something that clearly checks an external source for the date and time (the rank/title vendor, basically - you title will upgrade as you continue to play the game which eventually gives you candy multiplier bonuses that do not stack with tickets) you can go into a menu (guides suggest the curio menu) switch to settings, advance the day by one, go back into the game, exit the menu and get handed 256 candies.  You can repeat this process over and over and over again and it will take you a long time, but it will be far, far faster than getting the candies legitimately.  And by far, far faster, I mean it will take hours of your life and cause you to advance the clock manually, day-by-day, to June 22nd, 2014 if you started today with a no-streak (meaning the first ten days were building up to the 256).  Like I did.  Today.  Right before I bought the golden poop soft-serve and got the trophy for getting the golden poop soft-serve, uploaded my save data to online storage and deleted that shit.

That is really my main issue with the game other than it being short, but it's a pretty damn serious issue if you have terrible not-actually-OCD-but-let's-call-it-that-anyway like I do, and as a design philosophy, it's abhorrent.  You might think, with Namco and the way they treat Katamari games, that it was a trick to get you to -buy- candy with real money, but no, that's not even an option.  You can by Fan Damacies (that are otherwise completely random spawns) which you trade for Candy Tickets (and also unlock the free DLC missions with) and that's basically the gist of the whole....real-money aspect to it.  Aside from maybe buying more music or something, I didn't really look into it.  And it's not that I was going to buy candy, it's just that I was assured that that's what Namco wanted me to do.  But no....no it was not.  Which makes the decision even more baffling.  Still, for $3.75 and Eternal Modes, it was a rather fun, enjoyable game that would've been easily "alright" if it wasn't for that whole glaring issue.  As it stands, I just can't continue to recommend it unless you just...don't care about trophies at all.  Which is probably the healthy move.

it burns usssss, needs the trophies precious

Sony, This is Not How You Do a Price Drop

The 'Super Slim' Model of the PS3 isn't anything new, having been around since September, so just under a year, and it's quite obvious that it's going to be the last way to get a PS3 unless, you know, you do some online shopping or find a store that just so happens to have a regular Slim (or even rarer, a late-model 'phat').  Initially, this posed something of a nagging issue as the Super Slim was introduced at the exact same price-point of the regular Slim with neither of them taking a price-cut.  People started questioning the worth if it and, well, rightly so, since there was no real price difference or anything.  Traditionally there...are changes and such when this type of thing goes down.  But whatever, everyone just sort of ignored it and assumed the price would quietly be dropped down at some point and any late-comers could grab a PS3 on the cheap-ish to enjoy some of the great exclusives that the PS3 offered this generation.  It's only now, almost a full year later, that we see a Super Slim model at a lowered price-point and it is, uh...less than ideal.

The new 12 Gig (Solid State/Flash memory versus Hard Disk Drive) Super Slim will debut at $199.99 in North America and even it is not a new thing on the market.  This model of the Super Slim was previously exclusive to European and Hong Kong regions and for some reason it didn't die a horrible death of obscurity in the meanwhile as Sony moved further and further into digital ventures.  If it's not patently obvious, I question its existence in the first place and further wonder why it's re-emerging since it seems....quite a bit senseless if I'm being honest here.  Clearly, I'm not in the minority of people questioning it either, but what really bugs me is that it effectively kills any chance of a proper PS3 being put on sale for any less than the $270 pricetag it's currently sporting (generally with bundles and the like).  As someone who is basically in the market for a new PS3 because I am just tired of worrying about my 80 gig, I was hoping to find a nice budgeted version at some point considering I have spent about $570 on -just- PS3s (my original purchase, plus a YLOD replacement refurb) and the idea of setting that further up to $840 is...distasteful to say the least.

The common defense I'm basically seeing for the thing is that the Flash Memory isn't in the same place where the HDD bay is, so you can theoretically buy this model, buy a 1-2 TB drive and slap it right home.  Easily.  So easily that Sony even gives you instructions on the topic and whole-heartedly encourage the process.  The issue here is that, yes, you could spend about $70 on a 1TB and have precisely twice the space of a 500 gig that will run you $270, but I don't care I don't wanna fiddle with shit.  Selfish reason, granted since the pragmatic approach would be to do just that if it's even possible (I don't see why it wouldn't be), but just because you -can- do something doesn't mean you should, nor should you -have- to when it comes to circumstances like these.  Yet the problem is that you're still paying the same price regardless when the hope was...you know, for something less.  Which says nothing for the recently-deserved fear of consoles with higher-capacity HDDs becoming useless after Firmware updates until, you know fixed versions come out which you'll have to plop in through Safe mode and blah blah blah, nonsense.

Maybe it was silly of me to think that there was going to be a proper price-drop for the system in the looming wake of the PS4's release, considering there's going to be a 500 Gig GTAV Bundle for $270 (which, hell, I might just look into because I'm getting GTAV anyway and it's just a pack-in game with a new system and 500 gigs of space) coming out in September which is just...months (perhaps even -a- month) before the PS4 releases proper.  Of course, the PS3 is going to be a necessity regardless of the PS4's launch given the unfortunate lack of backwards compatibility (which is completely understandable, but still).  That is likely the reason for a non-drastic drop and instead something along the lines of this 12-gig silliness.  Much like the 4 Gig XBox 360, it honestly has no place in this world (even if the 12 gig is 'better' because you don't have to pay for proprietary memory like the 360) and it....just annoys me that it exists.  Oh well.  Never let it be said that I'm not willing to call Sony out on stupid things, I suppose.

honestly I kind of just want a new PS3 with lots of space so I can download my PS+ games for the stupid amount of time it'll take and not worry about the thing catching fire...or just using the warranty if it does

Bonus Post: Animal Crossing, What Are You Doing to Me?

The screenshot above is one that worries me greatly and with good reason.  You see, I have reached a point in Animal Crossing:  New Leaf where I am almost -free- of some of the most annoying shackles of the game for completionists.  In the world of Animal Crossing exists sets of Silver and Gold tools which, of course, you can only get by performing certain tasks.  Specifically in question here are the Golden Watering Can and the Golden Axe.  The Golden Watering Can requires you to achieve and maintain a "Perfect Town" for 15 days which is honestly more tedious than it is difficult.  The Golden Axe is something you get after you buy 50 Saplings from the plant store, of which they...only sell one a day.  Great.  You might be wondering just how these two things are linked.  It's very simple, really.

The Golden Watering Can really doesn't -matter- in a sense, in that it's more of a symbol, or a trophy if you will.  After you get the Golden Watering Can, there's really no point in keeping your town 'Perfect' anymore if you don't wish to.  Now one of the factors that determines whether your town is perfect or not?  The amount of trees you have.  You start out with so many trees, and you'll inevitably add to them with fruit trees, though perhaps you're not placing them in places that are....good, or where you want them.  So obviously then, you just want to cut them down, but if you do that, then your status drops.  So you tell yourself "I'll just wait until I have a perfect town, then it won't matter what I do" and it won't matter.  It won't matter even the slightest bit.  After you get the Golden Watering Can, it's that much easier to feel that your town is indeed your town to do with what you wish.

So you go buy an axe.  You ready yourself for the tree slaughter.  Perhaps you take down quite a few...and then your axe breaks.  There's only one axe for sale a day, and it's random -when- that day is.  You've started something that you simply cannot finish now, and it's going to drive you crazy.  This, my friends, is why you wait for the Golden Axe, because the Golden Axe does not break.  It cannot.  You can clear-cut your entire damn village if you want and it won't break.  And after that long, is it ever tempting to do just that.  But why would you cut down the trees?  Why would you get rid of a very good source of income?  Why?  Simply put:  Trees are fucking annoying and constantly in the way.

You run around and have to weave and dodge in between trees just to get about and it becomes -tedious-, so you decide to have a set path to go to make it easiest.  Except there are too many trees in the way regardless, so you can't just make a path.  This is why you want to cut them down.  You want to clear them out so you can make a road so you can get around easier.  -Then- you put trees back up somewhere where they're not annoying.  It is -your- town, so -you- make it look like -you- want it to.  The roads above are a testament that I am almost to this point.  I have placed down some roads, indeed some (like myself) would say far too many, but they're not enough.  There are far too many trees still, and I don't have my golden axe yet.  I cannot clear them.  But soon.

Soon.

okay I am kind of creeping myself out

Developers/Publishers Aren't as Smart as You Think They Are

If you pay attention to release announcements, like yesterday's Strider announcement, you tend to see two things that are almost always left out:  Wii U and Vita.  The 3DS misses a lot as well, but that's...kind of a different beast in that the 3DS is likely the weakest machine out there at the moment.  Which isn't a knock against it, it's just that it's fairly impossible to get some games to fit within its confines.  Watch_Dogs, for instance, simply wouldn't go on the device in the same form as it could go on the PS3, the Wii U or anything else.  It's not an unfair statement to make, is my point.  Regardless, that they're -not- on the Wii U or the Vita is always something of an anomaly, given that both platforms can more than likely stomach the game you're trying to hand out, especially if it's on the PS3 and possibly PC, given that it's been said it's an easy port from the former, and I imagine a lot of the PC Indies have found it rather simple to get their game on the Vita, and I've yet to hear of a screaming technical error from any game yet.

Whenever a question is posed, "Why isn't this game on the Wii U/Vita", someone will always (usually in a snarky fashion) state it's "Because those systems don't have anyone buying them."  Okay, so then the question becomes "Why isn't anyone buying them?" (by the way, people are buying them, obviously) and the answer is then, still snarkily, "Because they have no games."  Well, yes, they do have games, but okay, not quite as many as the other systems that have been around for seven years (or almost three for the 3DS), so yes, totally fair.  Totally.  Still, this is a lead-in question as well - "Why do they have no games?"  "Because they don't sell any systems."

Right.

So the way to get a system to sell is for it to already have a fantastic library of games on it already?  Games made for it, I assume is the qualifier, since, you know, the Wii U has the Wii library (of which I'm told has a few gems) and the Vita has a good percentage of the PSP library which has quite a fantastic line-up as well.  Regardless, I'm sure you can all see the logical inconsistency here.  I have faith in you all, you're smart people.

However, the answer to that is that it's simply 'unprofitable', and in today's environment, 'unprofitable' means 'doomed', either in the over-reactive presumptuous way, or the....actual, literal way, which is a fairly sad state of affairs.  That fault lies nowhere but on the developers and publishers for creating the environment to begin with.  We didn't force them to make grandiose teams of developers to work on possibly out-of-this-world-great games or potential over-polished garbage (or, hell, even under-polished garbage as we have seen), certainly.  We assisted in fostering it by buying the games, one could argue, but what are we going to do, not buy games because their developers/publishers were fiscally irresponsible in making them?  Of course not because that's silly.

The harsh truth is simply that you're going to have to eat a loss at some point.  Sorry, but that's just the truth of it.  You have to get games onto a platform to inspire purchases of it so you can put more games on it and eventually recoup from not only late purchases of that original game, but people who have finally picked up the console for the games who are grabbing yours up.  That's simply how it works.  Don't pretend the PS4 and the XBone are anomalies in this, considering the success both consoles seem to be having not only in pre-orders, but game announcements.  Think back on the announced lists and try to present a game that's 1.) Third-Party and 2.) Not also coming out for PS3/360 as a fall-back, ensuring that the PS4/XBone version is just an up-port.  Or perhaps a lateral port of the PC version.  I mean, go ahead, I'll wait, I'm pretty sure you're not going to find a lot.  (I'm gonna cut you off and go out on a limb here and suggest that Sunset Overdrive is a Second-Party thing, like Resistance for Sony has been.)

So it's not even as if they're giving the PS4/XBone 'proper' focus, either.  It's going to be up/side ports for a long time while Sony and Microsoft struggle to keep their First and Second parties making the system enticing enough for you to deem it worthy of a purchase if you're not sold on it already.  Neither of them will have very much trouble in this, of course - Sony has been working very hard at making the PS4 attractive from every angle and have succeeded almost uniformly, while Microsoft has gained back a lot of goodwill from the 180, specifically from the people who went "Well, I -want- Halo, but I don't want bullshit" since said bullshit is (possibly) gone.  The mandatory Kinect isn't near enough of a deal-breaker for most people (unless its requirement requires some funky layouts and/or won't allow a person to simply turn it around to keep the camera off of them, as they'd rather not deal with it) and you simply cannot fault Sony for much at this point, in terms of the PS4 itself.

Still, this is playing both sides of the fence, and eventually somebody is going to lose out on that end.  You're going to need other sources of revenue than the Large McHuge Super-AAA havens that people make the PS4/XBone out to be (as they made the PS3/360 out to be) and the time to get in on this is now.  Or rather, it was half a year ago at least, but you can still get in on it.  You especially want to jump in on Vita development, since the parity between the PS4 and the Vita is going to put the device in a lot of hands, and if it's there, people will buy your games.  Nintendo is probably going to get their act together on displaying the Wii U as a device that you want for reasons as well (if we know Nintendo, part of it'll likely be a price cut right around November to 'devalue' the PS4/XBone out of the gate), and to continue to ignore them isn't going to do you any favors.  People -will- play non-Nintendo First-Party games on a Wii U if you give them to us, it's just in your court to make that leap.  Since you're just hurting yourselves by not making the effort everywhere you could be focusing.

the cyclical bullshit is just so damn annoying

Forza 5 Shipping as an Unfinished Game

Note the title of this post.  Now note the title of the Joystiq post I'm sourcing primarily: "Forza 5 has a mandatory day one download".  Now note the title of the IGN post they sourced from: "Forza Motorsport 5 Requires One-Time Internet Connection".  Hell, look at the title of Eurogamer's post about the topic: "Forza 5 mandatory day one download adds Drivatars for offline play".  Now marvel in wonder in disappointment when friggin' Kotaku of all places manages to title a post the correct way to deliver the message from this Forza 5 news: "Forza 5 Isn't All On The Disc".

It's hard to make it really clear what I'm talking about without giving you the source material, so let's do that.

“So when you first boot up the game, we’re going to ask you to log in,” he explained. “And when you log in you’re going to get the Drivatars and you’re also going to get a whole bunch of content: tracks and cars. Our production schedule is such that we are putting them in as late as possible and that means making them free as downloadable content on Day One.

“[But] that is required content to play the game. We basically have designed the game to work with all that content no matter how late is coming in, in order to make the biggest game possible.”

After that, Greenawalt said, Forza 5 is like your refrigerator. “You have to fill it up with food the first time,” he explained. “And from then on, you connect whenever you want when you want to update your food. The Drivatars are as fresh as they are. It’s not like they’re going to degrade, but when you’re looking for new stuff – fresh stuff…it’s going to keep evolving. That’s the nature of this Drivatar system.”

“You do have to connect the game in order to get the latest Drivatars, because we need as many people training them as possible. And so rather than having just a launch-day set that was created by us, every day that people race is going to make the Drivatar set that much more accurate, that much more diverse, that much more interesting.

“All of the cloud and online features make the game far, far better,” Greenawalt summed up. “In fact I’d even say revolutionary. The things we’re doing with opponents and Drivatar are not something that anyone can envision unless you’ve played it. But we’re trying to get as much of that into the unconnected, offline mode as well.

“We’re not making a launch game. We’re making Forza 5, at launch.”

I cut out as much of the editorializing and whatnot as I could to simply give you the quotes from the post, since I provided the links anyway, and that should allow you to read the rest if you so desire.  But, I mean, the whole point of this post -is- to give you the whole picture on the issue, of course, so it may not be necessary.  Also, note the spin in place that has spurned a lot of misinformation about just what's going on here.  It's quite well done, of course, but it's annoying in how well it's seemed to work, given the comments from those particular sites from people asking for clarification and people touting misinformation with a "This is not news" tagline.  There are also people simply misinterpreting the news pretty clearly to push their own agenda, with the overall response pointing to this not being something to be outraged about despite all the obvious merits of it.  So I'm going to make it easy.

If you throw down $60 (or however much) on Forza 5 inside the confines of a store, walk out with a case that holds a disc of the game, go home, put that disc in the XBone and you cannot, for whatever reason, download the Day-One Download?  You cannot play the game.  The reason for this is that the full game is not printed on the disc.  It is that simple, and it's definitely a first.  A bad first at that.

How is this possible?  Well, it's explained quite clearly in the above if you read it correctly.  When the discs are going to start being printed, Forza 5 will not be a complete, finished game.  So they're printing what's going to be done of it and then working on it up until the days prior to the game launch, (hopefully) submitting it to QA and then letting the rest of the game go up on XBox Live for you to download on Day One.  The same day when, you know, a million other people are going to be downloading that data and the XBone's mandatory day one firmware update.  This is not a recipe for disaster on its face or anything, not to mention the undercurrent of it.  Regardless, it's something that needs stating and I cannot stress this enough:  THIS IS NOT A PATCH.  THIS IS NOT AN UPDATE.  It's astounding that that one point is not clear, because I'm sure if it was a little more clear, people wouldn't be so understanding of it.

Or maybe they would be, I don't know.  People arguing for this are basically throwing every point that we rallied against the XBone for to make this acceptable and the disparity between people arguing for and against it is much, much closer than it was for the XBone's policies.  "If you're buying the XBone, you have to have internet for the day one firmware anyway, so this isn't a big deal." "People barely play Forza offline anyway." "If you're complaining about this, you're using the internet, so you have no room to complain." and the old-standby "If you can't afford the internet, you shouldn't be buying a $500 entertainment machine." are all thrown around, I assume unironically, and it just makes my head hurt because I start questioning whether or not I'm being unreasonable.

I'm not.  If you're selling a game on a disc, the game should be on the disc.  Full Stop.

It doesn't matter if the "Drivatars" basically requires the internet to fulfill their promises and were what Forza 5 was seemingly built around because Forza 5 still claims to have an off-line singleplayer portion to it.  It doesn't matter that they're "using every bit of time up to launch to make it the biggest game it could be".  It doesn't even matter if the download isn't going to be all that big (though it's certainly going to be).  Doing this kind of thing is bullshit, and defending it on any level basically tells everyone that you're in the "Fuck you, got mines" camp which is truly not the place you want to be.  You're willfully ignoring that a Disc is supposed to -be- the game, not merely a pass to play it as the original XBone would have made it.

So, sorry all you people wondering why this is news.  It's because it is news, no matter how much you want to plug your ears and go "La La La" until it passes.  If it's an isolated incident, then that's just a blip on the radar, but if it starts a trend of "Fuck worrying about finishing the game on time" rather than responsibly delaying a game you can't finish, then that's going to be no better than what we were expecting with the original XBone, if not worse.  All it takes is one company trying to mimic this and then not managing to actually finish the game before the release date because....well, it's a gamble.  You're betting you'll be done with a goodly bit of time left for QA and some companies out there simply aren't good with time management.  Hence the myriad of delays you see games get almost every day.  Hopefully, this'll be the last time we hear of news like this.

I get that more people are going to buy an XBone now that it's not completely abhorrent, but you don't have to blindly defend it from actual criticism

Pokemon X/Y and Insanity

Citing various sources, including a fantastic video game, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and over again and expecting things to turn out different.  This is basically me with Pokemon.  We all know of the Sonic Cycle which is a true thing that happened in times of yore, and essentially, I have my own Pokemon cycle.  Basically I hear of a new Pokemon game and I hope against all hope that this one, this is going to be the different one.  The one that really innovates the series rather than giving us a new area, new pokemon, a few mechanics tweaks and maybe a new type or two which are, by and large, generally more trouble than they're worth.  The one that breaks the conventions of old and ushers in a -new- style of Pokemon game, one that is approachable to both new and old players while also catering to them both, retaining familiarity to draw in and keep new fans, while changing things up to excite veteran ones.  I keep this hope alive while I await new bits of news to come out.

And then they announce what the new "Team" is.

And I sigh and resign myself to buying what is essentially Pokemon Ruby for the nth time.  A band of adults running around in some megalomaniacal scheme that inevitably involves some form of Pokemon God that still hasn't been discovered on the grand scale despite it literally being a God and thus something other regions would know of, only to be thwarted by you, a precocious tweenager that's always given their first Pokemon by some Professor that is inevitably Grass, Fire or Water type.  Cut it, print it, gold.

I have made many, many posts about Pokemon and the bulk of them are not celebrating what it is, but rather lamenting that it could be better.  This seems like it is something that is never going to stop happening unless I stop caring about Pokemon entirely, which I don't think is something I'm capable of doing while there is not a proper replacement abound.  I just can't -not- envision a game that is like Pokemon but is also so much -more- than what Nintendo and/or Game Freak restrain the titles to be.  I've said it before that I understand that every Pokemon game is designed with the idea in mind that it's going to be -somebody's- first Pokemon game, but that doesn't excuse anything.  Pokemon Gold/Silver was somebody's first Pokemon game as well, and that has, in many ways, still managed to blow even the newer games away with its scope if nothing else.

Pokemon games can have natural conflict, natural progression without a cartoonishly inept and evil group of malefactors running around and shouting about how bad they're being or being so deluded that it boggles the mind as to how they've avoided the sanitorium.  Indeed, the "Teams" are truly my biggest pet peeve with the entire series since they don't even make sense anymore - they simply exist to exist because they've always existed.  They are basically causality loops of the Pokemon Meta-verse, except nowhere near as complex, yet exactly as illogical.  I imagine it's crazy to think they will ever -not- be there because they have, in fact, -always- been there, apparently.  Perhaps it's some sort of meta-commentary on society when every single area of a given world has the exact same scenario occurring in it at what could or could not be the exact same time.  Or...no, probably not.

All I want, which is appropriate enough for the series, is some form of proper evolution.  I've come up with all sorts of ideas for this which have been the subject of many, many posts before today, which I won't even look for since you have the Pokemon tag link above, but I understand that some of them may just beyond the scope for a short-term change.  Not everything can be out of that scope and an idea comes to mind that takes advantage of mechanics that have already existed and been used in the games that can also mirror....well, every single piece of media surrounding the Pokemon series as a whole.  I understand it's not the easiest thing to implement in the fashion that I imagine it in, but it would be easier than other ideas that would also enrich the game.

Double and even Triple team battles have been a thing in the games so far, and there are even portions of some of the games where you have a partner that follows you around specifically for Double-Battles.  So...why not extend that to the whole game?  In addition to your team of Pokemon, just make it so that some of the characters in the game are 'recruitable' in that you can buddy up with them and travel the region alongside them, with the option of bringing them in on Double-Battles if you so choose.  Have it be so that you can influence their own team, whether or not they evolve their mons, stuff like that.  Just add another layer of depth to the game that can also be completely neglected if you wish, since you wouldn't -have- to recruit any of these characters.  I just think it would be interesting to have a 'friend' mechanic in the game so that your character would have, by extension, a bit more of a personality, or even just a bit of more 'ownership' from you, the player.  "My character is always friends with (Character) and is a dick because he keeps telling them not to evolve their (Mon)." or "My character goes around and makes friends with everyone, making sure they're on the road to having the best mons they can before parting ways."  Just something.

Just like every other time, I can only say that this is -not- the Pokemon game that I want.  I want something that expands beyond the boundaries that have been in place for damn near two decades.  Or, more appropriately, the ones that have been in place since Ruby and Sapphire, some 11 years ago.  The game can be so much more, but Game Freak has to try it.  Much like every other time, I will hold out hope that the next game, the next Pokemon iteration, will be the one that I want.  And, to complete the cycle, it just won't be, yet I'll buy it anyway, because it's the only Pokemon fix that I -have-.  Which I can only imagine is the only reason for why Game Freak and Nintendo aren't pushing anything - if you want your Pokemon fix, you have only one place to go.  Maybe when someone finally makes a capable clone, we'll see a shift, but I don't foresee that happening anytime soon.  I can damn well hope for something like that on the Vita, however.  I can hope very hard.

Of course if a Pokemon-like series showed up on the Vita, it wouldn't be 'competition' it would just be called a 'rip-off' and I will just get so angry about that

Let's Talk About the New Characters in Dynasty Warriors 8 - Jin Edition

Time for the final iteration of this series of posts talking about the additions to the roster for the up-coming Dynasty Warriors 8.  Jin is perhaps one of the more tricky kingdoms to talk about because of the fact that it wasn't actually known as Jin until the war of the era was just about done.  Up until that point, it was still known as Wei (or Cao Wei, historically) so it's honestly a bit hard to say where the line is.  So hard that even KOEI had no real idea where to draw it with their initial cast for DW7 that included Xiahou Ba, someone that defected to Shu almost instantly after the Simas rose to the power that would eventually allow them to take control of the empire, reducing the Caos rule to figurehead at best.  That is, of course, generally the line as it seems to be, however - as soon as Sima Yi seized power from Cao Shuang, that's generally where it feels like Wei ends and Jin begins.  As luck would have it, the three new players for Jin do manage to reinforce that.

Jia Chong is up first, and he's definitely a Jin man through and through.  He rose to prominence after Sima Yi passed on and Sima Shi took over, continuing to serve even as Sima Shi died as well, passing on the kingdom to Sima Zhao.  Chong was also one of the two people who were crucial in stopping Cao Mao (one of the Wei Emperors) from seizing power back for the Cao family during an attempted coup.  He wasn't the one who killed Mao directly, but his subordinate and even though he wasn't executed for the 'crime', his name was always associated with the murder of Cao Mao.  (The direct line from Wiki is "From that point on, however, Jia's reputation among the people was one of regicide." which, completely out of context, is awesome.)  Chong was also instrumental in helping suppress the myriad of rebellions that plagued Cao Wei during the entire Sima clan reign prior to the actual claiming of Jin as its own Dynasty.  Though, he did serve after Jin was claimed and reluctantly lead many invasions into Wu until Wu finally surrendered, bringing the whole of China together.  So, in essence, Jia Chong -is- Jin through-and-through, and it's a good thing they went with him as a unique.  He fights with throwing axes which is just...awesome and I have absolutely no complaints at all.

Wen Yang is next, and he is a shining example of something I touched on before, in that just being a unique character in a Dynasty Warriors game was only half the point, where the other half was the actual presentation of it.  I can't say Wen Yang is a consummate Jin officer because he and his father were part of one of the rebellions -against- the Simas, but he joined them after it was quelled and was later on known for his valor and skill in battle.  See, the issue here is that there are relatively few officers of the era that were known for wielding a specific weapon since in most cases they just used a sword, a bow or a polearm.  But, of course, if everyone just had a sword, a bow or a polearm, it would be kind of a boring game as DW6 with its insane amount of polearms and cloned movesets can attest to.  So my thinking is that when you -get- someone who was known for wielding a non-traditional weapon give him that fucking weapon.  In this case, Wen Yang was famous for using a steel whip in battle which is -astounding-, but then you look on the KOEI site and his weapon is listed as....javelin.  A double-tipped javelin at that.  At this point, it almost seems like a waste and I genuinely wonder if his moveset is even going to be unique to him.  Unfortunate, since he doesn't have a -lot- attributed to him, but his reputation was there.

Last up is Zhang Chunhua, who was actually one of the few ladies of the period that actually has something credited to her name.  You see, Chunhua was Sima Yi's wife and in the times before he was employed by Cao Cao, he was, well, simply enjoying not being part of the strife of the era.  But he had talents that were known of and, according to one account, Cao Cao sent an official envoy requesting his service, but he declined citing poor health.  However, one of his maids saw him moving about in a manner that clearly suggested he wasn't ill and it worried Chunhua that the maid might send word to Cao Cao and get them all in trouble for ignoring an official request.  She was so worried, in fact, that she straight-up murdered the maid to keep her silent.  This is...roughly the only thing attributed to her in the whole of the era aside from giving birth to Sima Shi, Sima Zhao and a couple other children, but still, it's more than -some- of the others get.  As sort of a cute joke, I assume, Zheng Chunhua wields what are basically whip-gloves (pictured above) which were Sima Yi's weapons in Dynasty Warriors 6 for some ungodly reason.

Since there are no new additions to the Others category, (which is a grave oversight in my opinion) this will be the last of these posts for now.  I -would- mention something in a blurb about Zuo Ci here as he's being reintroduced to the Others portion of the cast after a two game absence, but he's a mystic, and mystics have a lot of bullshit around them, so it's hard to talk about them in a historical sense.  If you're one of the fine folks who've read each of these, I thank you because I honestly do enjoy history, so I enjoy sharing it.  I hope you found it at least mildly entertaining and/or informational if you read it at all.  In the meantime, I'll just be getting excited at the prospect of being able to play a Dynasty Warriors game again.  A game that isn't Dynasty Warriors Next.  Which I have so much grinding to do in.  So much grinding.

seriously, how do you not give the guy famous for wielding a friggin' steel whip a friggin' steel whip, I don't even

Let's Talk About the New Characters in Dynasty Warriors 8 - Wu Edition

Tonight, we round third base and discuss Wu's additions to Dynasty Warriors 8.  As with Wei, there are only two to pick and initially, I felt that perhaps one of the picks was a bit of a wasted one.  However, after a bit of further study, I do have to say that KOEI did good again with their picks this time around even if one of them wasn't -technically- a warrior of the time.  It's still a rather good showing, especially after Shu's picks and while I haven't looked too deeply into Jin's, I'm willing to say that the streak probably ends here for the most part.  Good run and all of that, but KOEI just cannot resist novelty characters and/or characters that just had absolutely no bearing on the era according to history -or- the novel on which they base the games off of for the most part.  Still, be happy for what they got right and such.

Let's speak of the pictured above first, which is a man by the name of Lu Su.  This was the guy that I thought originally didn't really need a spot since, first and foremost, he was a strategist and an advisor, but credit where it's due, the dude -did- lead troops into battle.  Not often, but enough to add General to his repertoire, eventually leading to his title of "General Across the River".  Not one of the best title names, as there are some real gems, but not bad either.  However, the reason why Lu Su is important is basically that you look at a majority of the decisions Sun Quan made, the big ones, and you have to realize that Lu Su is the reason Quan made most of them.  Su advocated resisting Cao Cao's larger forces when everyone else suggested surrender and bid that they team up with Liu Bei for a little-known conflict known as the Battle of Red Cliffs.  You know, just a tiny battle that we certainly haven't heard of and certainly wasn't turned into a John Woo movie or anything. 

He also spoke to lending Jing territory to Liu Bei when he came and asked to be named governor of the area to establish a home for himself and his followers.  He was the only one who suggested it would be a good idea, as it would strengthen their relationship as it was forged by their cooperation in the Battle of Red Cliffs.  Further, he was the only one to suggest that Liu Bei be allowed to retain part of Jing territory (which Wu had loaned to Shu) after Shu had established itself further west and doing so eventually allowed Wu to seize a big opportunity in what was Lu Meng's invasion of Jing which had occurred while Guan Yu was busy with Cao Cao's forces at Fan Castle.  This occurred two years after Lu Su's death, of course, but had he not argued to maintain things as they were, that opportunity might not have presented itself.  This is among other examples, so Lu Su was basically the guy behind the guy, if you will.  As such, I'm completely fine with him being a character since he's basically Sun Quan's Zhuge Liang or Sima Yi.  The character page says his weapon is a Rake, but looking at the above screenshot, I'm not....quite sure what to call that.  Let's just go with it, I suppose.

The other character added to the game was Han Dang and this was a very good move indeed.  Han Dang is one of those few, few officers that survived what is essentially a goodly portion of the major struggle of the era.  He joined up with Sun Jian at the start when Sun Jian and the rest of China were participating in quelling the Yellow Turbans and ended up staying with Wu until he died two years after Sun Quan, Sun Jian's second son, had declared himself Emperor of Wu.  Name an important battle that Wu was in and Han Dang was probably in it.  That alone is impressive since he was often right in the thick of things and managed to survive the battlefield which is not something that just anybody could claim.  It could be said that it was because of his need to inspire his men to fight as one no matter what, to trust in that unity, as well as the respect he showed everyone around him.  They don't always have to be the dude who turned the tide of a battle or something like that - sometimes they just have to be a cool dude which Han Dang was.  His weapon will be a Short Pike, apparently.

These two additions are, as stated, definitely indications of progress which is a very, very good thing of course.  It's not perfect just yet, but it could never be, I'm sure as it's not only the inclusion of characters, but their portrayal that is important and while KOEI may deliver on the former, they often fail at the latter.  That is my chief concern where it concerns adding Zhu Ran to the roster which is as much of an inevitability as anything, given how badass Zhu Ran was.  Other notable Wu inclusions would be Pan Zhang, He Qi and Xu Sheng which sort of shows just how much is left in the pool considering there are quite a few other notables (Including Sun Quan's sons) that could be added, especially for long-game purposes.  With Xtreme Legends favoring Wei for 7 and Empires (damnit, KOEI) favoring Shu, perhaps Xtreme Legends for 8 will put a few Wu characters into play?  We'll see!  Hopefully.  (Physical product, KOEI, seriously)

Zhu Ran, baddest dude in the land, bitches

Let's Talk About the New Characters in Dynasty Warriors 8 - Wei Edition

Tonight, we resume our history lesson/rant by speaking on the Wei side of the Dynasty Warriors 8 character additions.  Of the three main kingdoms, Shu (the kingdom that's had more officers for several iterations) was the only one to receive three new characters (of course) with Wei and Wu only seeing the addition of two new characters per faction with the remaining three showing up in Jin's roster.  Would you be surprised if I stated that Wu and Wei are the two factions of the three that actually need the characters because they actually have them in history?  No?  Yeah, I didn't figure as much.  Because you guys are smart, and I yell about it enough that it's fairly obvious.  Regardless, the two Wei picks were good ones, if nothing else.

The first character introduced was Li Dian which was a fine, fine choice, given that he was actually a character who had some bearing and impact on the era in a big way.  In fact, a -lot- of Wei officers would fall into this category, meaning there are still plenty of misrepresentation issues to be addressed, but this shows that they're at least working on it, as did two....one of the characters they added for DW7: Xtreme Legends (as well as the one they re-added).  Li Dian wasn't much of a warrior to start off with, doing more studying than anything, but that proved to be his benefit later in life when that insight gave him some particular observational skills.  Like being able to see a blatant ambush attempt by the Shu army even when his fellows couldn't and then riding in to the rescue when an ambush (surprise!) happened.  Unfortunately, KOEI seems to lose the plot in their portrayal of him, as he's being painted as an easygoing, flippant guy when he was historically known to be very duty-first and respectful as well as smart.  Their portrayal is kind of further exaggerated by his weapon, called a Wheeled Halberd which is....a thing.  Two steps forward, one step back, I suppose.

The second introduction is long, long overdue in Yue Jin who is one of the more famous generals in the whole of Wei's history.  Like Li Dian, Yue Jin is one of the people who were basically with Cao Cao from the beginning (which oddly contrasts with KOEI's vision of the long-game as mentioned, but they're overdue as stated, so eh), but unlike Li Dian, Yue Jin was one of the Five Elite Generals of Wei which is....kind of a big deal and kind of makes it all the more strange that, here we are, eight mainline titles in and he's only now being made a unique character.  What makes characters that were actually relevant interesting, however, is that you actually can figure on just what battles they'll be prominent in, especially considering their new-ness which naturally means they'll be the focus of those battles.  The historic Battle of Guandu will definitely see a heavy bit of time go to Yue Jin now that he's unique and likely some for the Hefei Campaign (which will be one or two missions simply titled "The Battle of Hefei" of course).  With the latter, considering Li Dian is a unique as well, I expect a take on Hefei that hasn't been taken yet, in what is described here:

Before Cao Cao left to attack Zhang Lu, he left his representative Xue Ti with a letter that read "Open when the enemy arrives" on the envelope. As Sun Quan's army was already advancing towards Hefei, the defending generals then opened the letter as instructed. It stated, "When Sun Quan arrives, generals Zhang (Liao) and Li (Dian) will engage him; General Yue (Jin) will remain behind to defend and not go to battle." The generals were puzzled by the instructions. It was well known that Li Dian and Zhang Liao had a personal feud, and Yue Jin lacked experience on defending a fortress, even though he was renowned to be the best vanguard in Cao Cao's forces. As the three of them did not get along well with each other, Zhang Liao feared that they might disobey orders. He said, "Our lord is away at war. By the time his reinforcements reach here, we're already done for. So he is actually instructing us to take advantage of the situation, when the enemy has just arrived and not fully gathered yet, to attack them and devastate their morale so as to calm our men and strengthen our defences. Victory or defeat, it all depends on this battle. Why are the two of you still hesitating?" Li Dian was moved and he said, "This is a national crisis. We'll see how your strategy works out. How can I allow my personal affairs take precedence over my official duties?" Zhang Liao then selected 800 "die-hard" soldiers overnight in preparation for the upcoming battle, and threw a banquet for his men.

Which was previously just handled by a beefed up Zhang Liao sort of appearing near Sun Quan's main camp and assaulting the shit out of it.  Of course, if you were a Wu officer, that meant get your ass to the main camp, but if you were a Wei officer it generally meant you had to set it up beforehand and then Zhang Liao would eventually retreat since nobody but you could usually rout the enemy commander.  He could take out anyone else who was in the main camp (and often did.  Near-automatically) but never the Commander.  This new spin on it, however, could place a more personal angle on it (as well as give Li Dian and Yue Jin legitimate characterization) and make the mission all the more badass if it's honestly just you and the two others against the entire Wu army at that point.  I will take it.

Li Dian and Yue Jin are honestly two prime picks, but they needed a third slot and it needed to be Yu Jin, the final of the Five Elite Generals of Wei.  I won't get into it anymore than that, because I wouldn't be surprised in the least if he's introduced in the eventual Xtreme Legends iteration of the game, given 7 opened the series to that possibility.  At which time I'll go into a little more description (unless Xtreme Legends is Download-only in which case KOEI can once again resume fucking off) since there's nothing worse than going "Oh hey, I can talk about this....but I already did like half a year ago".  All in all, where Shu's picks honestly seemed wasted (If you want to give actual Shu officers a slot, go for Liao Hua or Wang Ping at least) but Wei's seem so on the money that it's a shame there weren't more of them.  Of course, it's not...like there aren't superficial characters in Wei either.  Still, it's a good job by KOEI and that deserves at least a little praise!

seriously, how do you make Cai Wenji before the last two Elite Generals, I don't even

Let's Talk About the New Characters in Dynasty Warriors 8 - Shu Edition

The other night, I very nearly got side-tracked into a long-winded rant about the new characters added in the latest installment of the Dynasty Warriors franchise, but I stopped myself, rationalizing that it would simply be better to just give myself a post to let it out.  Because it's going to take quite a while to air out enough history nerdiness and frustration that I am allowed to have, even for a game that I am pointedly excited for.  And then I started thinking about it and got sort of intimidated on just going full-bore on this stuff because, again, it's just a lot of stuff.  Combine that with a mood shift last night and, well, I just didn't have it in me to actually do the write-up.  So today I thought, "Oh, I know, I'll just split it all up since I will yell a lot about Shu and Wu at least" and, well, that's honestly kind of a good idea.

KOEI's choices with the last two games seem focused on the long-game; that is, telling the end-tale of the war even though it's not quite as.....good, as the middle of it.  It's an odd choice, admittedly, but I'm just telling myself it's simply leading up to The War of the Eight Princes, where things kind of get interesting again for a little bit.  I'm not...quite sure what they'd do with the scenario (It's a little weird to include it in a Dynasty Warriors game, but not big enough for its own series) and if they were going to do anything with the surrounding time periods, they'd be much more inclined to take on the Warring States period ending with the establishment of the Qin Dynasty or perhaps even going beyond the fall of the Qin Dynasty and into the establishing of the Han Dynasty seeing as the Han plays a central plot point to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms towards the start of the whole thing.  Regardless, the end-game is the focus for now and Shu's three new characters emphasize that rather effectively.

It should, of course be noted once more that Dynasty Warriors has always, always erred more on the side of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novelization than history itself, so it's honestly no surprise that two of the new characters are children of Guan Yu with that as their sole claim to fame in the historical side of things.  Guan Yu was kind of a big deal in history, but not nearly as much as he was made in the novelization and, indeed, culture afterwards even going so far as being deified by Taoism and Buddhism.  Arguably enough, even the third new character is merely an extension of Guan Yu's family in a sense.  This is why we don't play Dynasty Warriors for historical accuracy.

Guan Xing, arguably Guan Yu's least important son (his only competition is a son that probably didn't exist in history) was more of an official than an officer or general in the historical texts, only seeing a couple years of prominence before his death to little or no fanfare.  So, of course in the Novelization, he was a capable warrior who challenged another officer for the honor of leading the vanguard during an attack on Wu territory for vengeance shortly after the fall of Fan Castle, which resulted in Guan Yu's capture and death.  Eventually he succeeded in killing the man who lead the unit that captured Guan Yu (Kind of - for one, two officers were given credit and for two, the novel states that Guan Yu's ghost stopped the man in his tracks to allow Xing to score the killing blow which is kind of lame), earning back his father's weapon which he presumably used for the rest of his military career.  However, in Dynasty Warriors 8, he'll wield something called "Wingblades" which I hope are not Lu Xun's twin swords because that would just be lazy.  Even as somebody who got the novel treatment, he didn't see -that- much importance levied onto him.

Guan Yinping was apparently the daughter of Guan Yu and by that virtue it simply meant she didn't do a thing historically.  (If the lack of Wikipedia link wasn't enough of a hint)  The female characters in Dynasty Warriors by and large rarely had any sort of presence in the era, if they existed at all, and more often than not were just people to be married off to solidify an alliance for however long it lasted.  Sun Shangxiang is one of the more notable instances of this, being married off to Liu Bei by Sun Quan (her brother) in an effort to stabilize tensions between their organizations (neither had claimed King or Emperor of their domain by this point, so Kingdom is the wrong word to use).  Similarly, Sun Quan suggested a marriage between one of his sons and Guan Yinping, though Guan Yu rejected it.  That is, uh...pretty much all there is to tell about her really.  She's going to be wielding a Dual-Headed Mace (which you can kind of see in the screenshot above, but can see it better here) which is neat if not hilariously inappropriate.

Finally, Zhang Bao kind of continues in Guan Xing's footsteps in being absolutely useless in history, but made huge in the novelization because of who he was.  Zhang Bao was the oldest son of Zhang Fei who was one of Shu's fiercest warriors and oath brother to Guan Yu and Liu Bei himself.  In history, he apparently died young, but of course in the novelization he didn't and went on to be that officer that feuded with Guan Xing in an attempt to lead the vanguard on a campaign against Wu.  (See?  Mentioned it earlier and everything.)  The reason I state that his inclusion is likely due in part to Guan Xing is because their story will likely revolve around being forced to become oath brothers (like Liu Bei, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu were) which made them sort of a team in the novelization from that point on.  I'm curious as to whether or not they'll keep the novelization's take on his death (Falling into a valley, basically) or if they'll do something else with it.  His weapon is called a Flail Sword despite obviously looking more like an oversized Katar at best.

I am going to take this moment to go on a little rant about Xu Shu who is completely and totally in the wrong faction.  Since I didn't get to see him in Dynasty Warriors 7:  Empires (Fucking KOEI) when he was added, I didn't pay a lot of attention.  However, turns out he's listed in Shu when...he just wasn't, really.  Much like Xiahou Ba being in Jin (Xiahou Ba fled Wei before it even became Jin), but I attributed Xiahou Ba's presence as a need for officers in Jin rather than Shu.  Xu Shu being in Shu makes no sense since he basically only served in Wei.  The story basically goes that Xu Shu met up with Liu Bei as Bei led thousands from their homes, fleeing Cao Cao's territory that eventually culminated in the Battle of Changban where Cao Cao's forces caught up with Liu Bei's own.  At most, Xu Shu advised Liu Bei in this battle before hearing that his mother was in Cao Cao's possession, leading him to state "Hey, I wish I coulda joined you, but I need my mom", essentially, and join up with Cao Cao where he stayed until he died decades later.  Instead of trying to take his mother to Liu Bei's territories to join up with him or something.  His return in Dynasty Warriors 8 still in Shu's over-inflated roster only adds to the silliness and bore mentioning.

This....is pretty much exactly why I decided to do separate posts for the new characters.  I am hopefully going to do other posts for Wei, Wu and Jin (no new Other characters this go around, unfortunately), but those will be another night.  Shu was just the one that nearly set me off on a rant (which, you see how long this went) so I figured it was better to do that one first.  Expect something similarly verbose when it comes to Wu not only because of who -was- added, but who -wasn't- added as well, for better or worse.  That's....something I'll explain when I get to it.  In the meantime, time to just be all excited that I'm going to get to buy and play a new Dynasty Warriors game!  It's a surprising amount of giddiness that I feel at the prospect.

I am just such a nerd

Delsin Rowe is a Product of Players Says Second Son Director

So, inFamous:  Second Son is something that I've gone on record as being excited for and I would say it's deservedly so, if only for the pedigree of the franchise and the developers behind it.  Of course, it helps that the actual game looks quite intriguing and quite nice on its own merits, certainly.  Yet, that's sort of the rub is that it -looks- interesting, since there's still not a whole lot of information about it floating around there just yet, or at least there's not a lot of information that I've found about it even if I haven't been exactly looking.  Media blackouts and all that, only half-followed, etc.  To be sure, I haven't decided quite yet if I want to follow the development of the game feverishly, to soak up all the info on a new inFamous game until I can actually get my hands on it, or if I would prefer to go into the experience uneducated so that it springs open to me as only the best type of present does.

However, through all of it, there has been one fairly obvious area of contention:  the main character.  Delsin Rowe caught a lot of flak for a lot of things - well, most things really, including his name - but really, I think the thing that people don't like about him is that he's not our beloved Cole MacGrath.  It's innocuous enough, new game, new platform, new character, right?  Makes sense, is nice and easy, and doesn't have to be more complicated than that.  Yet, Nate Fox, the director of inFamous:  Second Son had a little to say about specifically -why- we have Delsin Rowe and not Cole MacGrath.  And the reasoning, to me is a bit....suspect, to say the least.  I only caught wind of this because Chance posted about it and I made a little comment about my thoughts on it. 

Thing is, the post, by its very nature of explaining what it does, contains major inFamous 2 spoilers and, as you all know, I try my best to keep away from spoilers or at least make it as impossible as possible for you to 'accidentally' stumble across them.  Which is why I'm going to do a post break, something I rarely do, and go a little more in-depth about the whole situation.  So, of course, after the break, there are, again, major inFamous 2 spoilers so....you know.  You've been warned, and such.

Music! Metal Gear Rising: REVENGEANCE (Kind Of)

So, this is going to be a slightly different type of Music! post in that I'm not going to solely gush over three particular pieces of music from the mentioned Metal Gear Rising:  REVENGEANCE.  What I am going to do is express my appreciation for -one- song and then point out my annoyance with the way the whole OST has been wobbled.  Because, in all honesty, it has kind of been wobbled in one of the honestly weirdest ways I've ever seen something as simple as a soundtrack done.  I suppose that's....impressive in a sense, but really, I would've preferred things been easier since REVENGEANCE honestly has a really good soundtrack and this all is only going to detract from opinions of it.

The song I really want to focus on here tonight is possibly my favorite song off the entire soundtrack, which is Mistral's Theme - "A Stranger I Remain".  Mistral is the first real boss fight that you experience in the game as REVENGEANCE Raiden, so perhaps there is something of a different connection there, but really, I do rather enjoy the song that accompanies the fight.  Or...rather, I like -a- version of the song that accompanies it.  This statement requires a two-fold explanation of just what I mean - the first being the easiest.  One of the cooler things that REVENGEANCE (yes, all caps all the time, deal with it) does with the soundtrack is that there is an Instrumental version and a Vocal version of every song.  If you enter a fight with a full Blade Mode gauge (possibly even accrue a full gauge during the fight), you will be treated with the Vocal version, otherwise you just get the Instrumental.  That's pretty cool.

The other facet to the explanation is that there really seems to be no 'official' version of any particular song beyond what are on the actual, printed Soundtrack CDs out there.  The issue with this is that there are two Soundtracks - the Instrumental Soundtrack that came with the Limited Edition, and the Vocal Soundtrack that is available in stores and such.  Except, the Vocal Soundtrack is a little mis-named because it is actually the Remix Soundtrack since every song on it (bar one) is either a Platinum Remix, a Maniac Agenda Remix or a "Low Key" version.  There are also 12 Instrumental tracks that are, of course, the remixed versions of said tracks, so they're not Vocals at all.  Which means that there is no -Official- Soundtrack with the original versions of the songs available anywhere.  This is bad.  This is a Bad Thing™.

I think the easiest way to show off this disparity is by just getting right to it.  First up is the version of the song that's actually on the soundtracks and actually in the game, which is the Maniac Agenda Mix.

So, it's pretty simple, really.  A short tune meant for looping because Boss Fights will either take a little bit or less than a little bit and you're probably not really paying attention to the music.  Being that it's slightly more electric and metal than the original version (which is next) it makes for a little higher energy for the fight which is most welcome.  Unfortunately with being such a short remix, there's quite a bit of the song that is cut out which is a bit of a shame because it's a good song all told.  Well, kind of.  Again, it's all a bit of a complicated situation which I will further expound on now.

So, now that you've had the Remix, it's time for what is -possibly- the original version of the song.  I say possibly because, in truth, I have no damn clue if there's an easily accessible version of the originals of -any- of the songs, much less A Stranger I Remain.  Still the uploader is "MetalGearRisingOST", so I would assume this is kind of the only thing they are doing and thus I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt in this.  As said, this is (kind of, possibly) the 'Original' version of the song.

I would like to point out a couple things with this song.  First off the two minute rock interlude is a little self-indulgent and I always dislike this in songs.  It just irks me unless it's like a really mega-kickin' riff.  Secondly, you get to hear the parts of the song that -aren't- in the remix version, which I actually really like these parts.  Those parts are what got me to like the song overall, honestly, though it wasn't that version of the song that I listened to to hear them.  That is, in fact, the third part that I wanted to mention which is the most hilarious of them at all.  In that entire song, the whole five minutes and twenty-one seconds, compared to the two minutes twenty-six seconds of the remix, it actually leaves the entire first verse of the remix version out.  I don't know if that is exclusive to the remix or what, which seems silly if so, but it adds to the confusion.  The lyrics that are missing, by the by:

I've come here from nowhere
'cross the unforgiving sea
drifting further and further
it's all becoming clear to me
that violent winds are upon us and I can't speak
internal temperatures rising
and all the voices won't recede

I cannot imagine how this is a thing that has happened.  The only thing I can figure on, like I said, is that that verse was recorded solely for the remix version of the song, but that's rather silly and I don't know if I want to believe that.  It's something that, as said, further complicates what is already something of a complicated thing.

And just to add another layer of confusion to the whole basket, neither of those is the version of the song that I've been listening to.  Because there's yet -another- version that has -all- the lyrics that I stumbled across first, and, as such, it's the version I'm used to.

I'm honestly not sure if that's a fan-made version, but I can't tell of any obvious splicing and the background to the missing verse in this version doesn't sound like the background to the same verse in the remix.  Where it actually shows up.  So, in all honesty, I have not a damn clue what version of the song is the actual version of it.  Because I have a version with all the lyrics in said song that I've heard in other versions combined, and then I have a version from what seems like the closest to an 'official' uploader that is missing an entire verse while also including a mentioned over-indulgent two-minute guitar solo.  I personally like the last version I embedded, but that might also be because I am used to listening to it and such.  Still, the verses are all in it and they're all fairly nice.

It's a rather unfortunate situation that mars an otherwise really good soundtrack.  In that you have no idea what's -actually- there to give props to the artists, and what is possibly the work of someone else who took a song (possibly multiple versions of it) and played around for a few hours in a music program.  I'm holding out hope that they're going to do a digital release of the original tracks which will kind of cement just -what- is real, but I don't know why they didn't just do that when they released the game and the Vocal Remix album, if they were actually going to release the originals.  Still, there's a monetary gain to be had in doing so, so there might yet be a chance that it'll come out in the following weeks.  In the meantime, we do always have youtube, I suppose.

And Now the Wall Street Journal Says PS3 Streaming

One of the more persistent rumors about the PS4 is that, due to the drastically different architecture of the device, it won't be able to do native PS3 Backwards Compatibility due to leaving out 'The Cell" processor that the PS3 wholly relied on.  That is a definite possibility at this point, hell, I might as well say it's a probability, which is a Bad Thing™ since not only does it mean you can't pop in a PS3 game and play it on your shiny new PS4, but it will be difficult, if not impossible to bring over your PSN games as well, what with them being, you know, built on the PS3's architecture and all.  If anything, that latter point will be the one that stings the most since, well, digital games are a whole other beast from physical ones and if anything, -those- are the ones that are supposed to move with you.  Not allowing that library to shift onto newer platforms just seems like a move that will give more ammunition to everybody else.  If it goes down like that, that is, though I don't see how it's anything but an All-or-Nothing deal.

However, plenty of people have been suggesting that Sony's acquisition of the Game Streaming Service Gaikai, done sometime last June, will be implemented as a bandage for that wound.  It's all been speculation at this point, though Joystiq says that the Wall Street Journal is saying it's a definite thing.  Normally, I wouldn't give this any water to hold, and I'm still not saying I do, but the Wall Street Journal -is- the ones who said the PS4 is getting announced the 20th and released sometime this year, with much of the same certainty.  Who's to say that either report is correct, of course, though this streaming rumor has been circulating around long enough that I actually wanted to bring it up (again) in a more directed manner since I've only really touched on it in the past.  This pretty much just gave me the perfect excuse to do just that, so I decided to run with it.

The few times I have spoken about Streaming as a BC solution, I have been wholly negative and against the idea and that has not changed whatsoever.  First off, nobody, least of all me, knows just how in the hell Sony would actually plan to implement such an idea and each method carries caveats, some exclusive to that method, some not.  The general basis theory is that there will be this library of PS3 games, both retail and PSN-only that may or may not be the current digital library that will be available for streaming.  Things like Journey, KOEI games (goddamn you KOEI), and whatnot will all hopefully be present, meaning the libraries will match and you will theoretically have the same access to the same digital pool.  Except, let's face it, the library that you can buy on the PS3 and the Library of PS3 that you can stream will 100% not be a 1:1 match because problems with certain games handle data and loading, problems with licensing and just general problems.  So there's our first fault.

The next question is:  Who gets to access what in this digital pool?  Do you, by virtue of having a Playstation Network account get to stream Warriors Orochi 3 on the PS4 because you bought a PS4?  Probably not.  Do you, by virtue of having a Playstation Network account get to stream Warriors Orochi 3 on the PS4 because you bought it on the PS3?  That....would seem like it's the right idea, but it's hard to say.  It's hard to not picture that the streaming service will not, in some way, be a part of Playstation Plus, which just adds a whole new level of confusion to the mix.  Do you only get to stream if you have PS+, then?  Is that copy of Journey you purchased stuck on your PS3 unless you then also subscribe to PS+?  Do you only get access to games that you 'own' for streaming even with PS+?  (Though, provided the IGC continues, PS+ will gradually expand your library anyway)  It's convoluted, too much so, and though we might understand it, eventually, who else is?  Nobody.  How would you even market it if it was the highest case of the 'If's?  If you have a PS4, If you bought this game on your PS3 and If you have PS+, then you can totally stream it on the PS4, provided it's actually in the library of titles that can be streamed?  Who's buying that?

This is all, of course, ignoring the simple execution of such a thing.  Sony's servers for downloading PS3/PSN/PSP/Vita games have not been hailed as, well, the fastest, or even fast enough and while I'm assuming Gaikai's servers would be the ones being used instead, there's still quite a lot of things there if, in fact, the entire current digital library would be available for streaming.  Which, again, it won't be, and there won't be -more- options than the current library unless there are some massive shenanigans that make it possible.  So from server-side, it's hard to imagine that it's going to be fantastic and that is not even considering user-side whatsoever.  Personally?  My internet is shit, I've told everyone who will listen to this.  I can stream music with Music Unlimited and I can watch SD Netflix without a buffer.  I cannot do -more- than one of these things with the internet at a time.  I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that I cannot stream DmC:  Devil May Cry, Vanquish, Bayonetta, Dead Space of any variety and so on and so forth.  Hell, I probably couldn't stream Final Fantasy VII.  I am nowhere -near- the minority in this.  And even folks that -can- stream these games feasibly have to contend with internet companies far more prone to gnashing their teeth whenever you get close to a certain amount of internet usage per month, which, this sort of thing will eat away at like crazy.

At this point, I have no doubt in my mind that PS3 BC will be done through streaming rather than Hardware.  I can do nothing but sigh and make a little hand gesture at that.  It's a bad idea with bad precedent, bad repercussions and it's going to be the center of more than a few vitriolic rants from people around the internet, some influential, some not.  I'm still holding out hope that at least the smaller games, things like the mentioned Journey, like Retro City Rampage, like the upcoming Urban Trials Freestyle will be able to be downloaded, installed and played on a PS4, but I have no idea how that will be possible without a Cell.  Or how it will be possible to do PSN games, but not PS3 games.  So my hope is obviously waning a bit on that front.  Hopefully the Playstation Meeting will give me something to assuage my fears and doubts, but I really do not see how it could.  Still, the 20th cannot come fast enough so this unpleasantness is out in the light, rather than left in the wondering areas of our brains where things will almost always be -worse- somehow.

Far Cry 3: Beaten

By which I mean the main story is beaten.  Yes, I have...a lot of the side-content tied up as well, all the radio towers sorted, all the outposts liberated, most of the hunts completed, etc. etc. but the crowning achievement is, clearly, finishing the story to the game.  The rest is just the gravy to that meat, if you will.  Continuing the metaphor, I will say that I do believe I preferred the gravy to the meat by the time the last portions were scattered about my plate which is rather unfortunate.  To the point where I can comfortably say that I'm glad that I'm -done- with that because now I can just focus on flying around the island (sometimes literally thanks to the wingsuit) and picking up things, doing things for the last few bits of single-player trophies so that I can move on to the next game.

I could review Far Cry 3.  I kind of wanted to review it.  But we'd all be better served if I simply deferred you all towards Chance's review of the game which was the sole galvanizing factor that inspired my own purchase and playthrough.  I agree with his review 95% where my only take-aways are perhaps more my own grievances than actual issues with the game.

Which is exactly why I'm going to spend the rest of this post pointing them out.

I'm going to one-up Chance here for my first point.  To his statement that Hoyt is a little disappointing and boring after Vaas, I will see that and raise it with the statement that the entirety of the game after Vaas is just a mess.  A lot of Far Cry 3's personality, a lot of its build and its structure was made on the back of Vaas.  Not only just his character, his performance and what he stood for, but his counter-point to Jason Brody.  The imagery is plentiful in the game and the marketing - Vaas and Jason are one in the same, cut from the same cloth so to speak - it's just that Vaas has fully given in to himself, his whims and his psychoses whereas Jason still has that shred of humanity still.  They're perfectly played off of one another and the foundation of the entire game is built on top of their rivalry.

When Vaas is out of the picture, he takes part of that foundation away.  That looming threat of his way of thinking finally perveying its way into Jason's head, that idea that, perhaps, Jason could aspire to something more than the pissant with a knife stumbling through the jungle, even if it's not something tasteful.  Though, that's not entirely fair as Jason does eventually find his footing, he grows and becomes a warrior in his own right, but with Vaas around, being what inspired that change mostly out of fear, there was always a chance of regression.  Vaas was Jason's fear and without Vaas, Jason is simply the flaming sword of retribution, poised to cut a charring swath through the rest of the organization Vaas was a part of.

Which sounds really cool, right?  You would think that would be awesome.

But it's....just not.

After all that build with Vaas, Hoyt might as well have been some hobo they dragged in off of the street.  And in execution, that's....basically what he was.  You go from this story where the protagonist and antagonist are just five paces removed from one another to a story where the protagonist sees the antagonist as a target and the antagonist sees the protagonist as a rat.  It's bland and uninspired .  To their credit, the actors involved (Hoyt and Jason's VAs, I mean) try and they do nicely in their jobs, but you're only as good as what you have to work with and what they had to work with just wasn't good.  Hoyt -could- have been made interesting, even in the wake of Vaas, but it simply wasn't in the cards (ha!) for him and that is really unfortunate.

Similarly disjointed was the change in pace from the game's wonderfully crafted and personal ideas in the jungle, in the Vaas sections, to the areas in Hoyt's section that involve you shooting about twenty privateers per mission while also blowing up at least two things with not much else to it.  It's a delicious display of destruction to be sure, but it's all style and no substance.  Where I was having fun with the story missions beforehand, I simply saw the latter group as chores to be worked through.  Inevitably, each mission, I just ended up being forced to run from cover to cover, plinking away with my Bushman Assault Rifle all the while, looking wistfully off to the side where variety sat, waiting to be utilized again in the form of sections where I could actually pull off stealth (the missions allowed for very few places to hide and stalk from, forcing you into the open, and whenever a body was found, no matter the circumstances, everybody knew it was -you- that put it there); areas where sniper rifles where the weapon of the day, where I could take my time and remember what it was like, being able to savor the moment when Jason inhales, lines up a perfect shot and pulls the trigger, exhaling as a spray of red bursts into the air like fireworks on a summer's eve.

While "the last third of the story pretty much sucks" might be a damning statement to most games (and likely should be one here), I can't help but state that, you know what?  It's all just water under the bridge.  When you're playing Far Cry 3, enjoying all of the nuances you find yourself getting more and more comfortable with, there's almost nothing to compare it to.  It's breath-takingly gorgeous, the jungle feels alive and the games many, many reasons to explore only reinforce that again and again.  Most of all, getting around, carving out your own story in the backyards of the Rook Islands is just fun - no bones about it.  I can't even begin to regale the stories that I have about each and every outpost that I liberated today - because there is a story for each one - which is an amazing thing in itself.  It manages to strike a perfect balance for any type of playthrough that you might be doing, which is something we clamor for and laud when we find the scant few examples of such a thing that we have.

It's for that reason that my big long angry rant about the Hoyt section and all that's involved is just my 5% of straying out of complete agreement with Chance's glowing review.  And in a sense, it's not even much of disagreeing, I'm just hammering on something far more than he did.  The capacity for sheer fun that Far Cry 3 has within its confines is staggering, and that makes it a truly great game.  Definitely one of 2012's best, which is something I certainly never would have expected before I played it.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is Also Dumb

Ever since I popped XIII-2 in after beating XIII and subsequently reviewing it, I have been trying so very hard to like it.  Because it's apparently good!  I mean, that's all I've heard about it since it came out at the start of this year and, after what was considered a 'bad game' like Final Fantasy XIII, the idea that the sequel was, then, good seemed like it had to have a -lot- done right to earn such praise.  In most cases, even when you don't particularly like a game that is praised as 'good' by the collective known as 'the internet', you can at least see why they judged such as they did, so at the very least, even if XIII is 'bad' and XIII-2 is 'decent' if not great, then hey, you've upgraded in any case, right?  So everything's sugar and rainbows no matter what, because at least, at least you're getting Final Fantasy XIII 'if it were good'.  Surely, I'm not really hammering in this point for any reason in particular.

So, before I address what is perhaps the least subtle thing I've said in the entirety of writing this blog, I would like to once again direct your attention to a recent post titled "How Final Fantasy XIII Could Have Been Better" because I pointed out three specific areas in which FFXIII came up short - Linearity, Poor Balance in terms of the Skill System and General lack of Focus with the story and elements as a whole.  I have stated, as well, in the past that the Battle System is an unusually good aspect of the game, that the Crystarium was not wholly bad and was, in fact, close to being good and that the characters, if nothing else, were fantastically established and grown throughout Final Fantasy XIII.  For XIII-2 to be praised so highly, you would think that it would at least fix a couple of the issues while strengthening the good parts, because that's generally how things work - a clear improvement gets a cheering.  And it is because of all that, that I think Final Fantasy XIII-2 is an amazing game, because it manages to take everything I just said, good and bad, and make it worse.  Frankly, I am fucking baffled and amazed at just how the hell that works.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a game that knows even less about what the hell it wants to do than its predecessor and that is saying something.  Being that it's a time travel story (spoiler:  FFXIII-2 has a Time Travel story), you go into it knowing that by the end of it, absolutely goddamn nothing will make sense because nobody knows how to write a competent time travel story that isn't Chrono Trigger, and I'm sure people will argue on that one too.  That, however, doesn't excuse the absolute laziness that goes through the rest of it, hitting on the parts that aren't even directly affected by time travel dickery.  For example, and this is pretty much the biggest example and the one I've been gritting my teeth against for the entirety of today in which I put many, many hours into the game, let me tell you about Lightning.  And when I say let me tell you about Lightning, I mean I am going to openly spoil Final Fantasy XIII so if you don't want to know anything, please move on to another post, sorry for the inconvenience.  I can't very well explain the laziness in the story without explaining the story, unfortunately, and I imagine most of the folks who want to play it, really want to play it, have already and know this anyway.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 begins with Lightning in a strange land that is quickly identified as 'Valhalla' where she and Odin are fighting some dude and it's all very epic I assure you and stuff is going on.  Then one of our protagonists, Noel, is introduced and speaks to Lightning who gives him a magical moogle (I am serious) and tells him to go find Serah on the other end of a time gate.  This is important.  So, blah blah blah, Noel finds Serah and they become TIME TRAVEL BUDDIES and BLAH BLAH BLAH, none of this is actually important, really except that the gist of it is Serah says "I had a dream that Lightning was in Valhalla, so I know she's alive" and Noel says "Yeah, I was there, she is" and Serah is genuinely fucking surprised by this.  They go on to meet old friends, discuss the situation and find more evidence that lends credence to the story of the guy who literally brought a fucking magical transforming Moogle that can talk and mentions Lightning through a time gate saying he saw Lightning.  And every.  single.  time. they 'realize', with great shock that Lightning 'might' be alive in Valhalla and that maybe they can get to her through a time gate.

I wish I was kidding.  I honestly do, because this shit is offensively stupid and it detracts from the overall experience which isn't too high to begin with.  Because the game can branch, in that you can go off and dick around in many time periods at once, I assume -some- of it can be contributed to the overlap in ensuring you establish a story no matter where the player goes, but after a certain point, you're literally somewhere you can only get after Point A and Point A included a portion where this whole Lightning bullshit was talked about already, and regardless, you have to play through everything eventually, so maybe you just need to manage it a little tighter in the narrative, which, after FFXIII is a fucking -riot- to say. 

But I can't really say too much of the story or the narrative overall just yet since I haven't beaten the game.  I imagine that when I do, I'll have an entirely larger post devoted to picking it apart completely and totally because I am very annoyed.  I guess the thing that's the problem is that I just really saw potential with FFXIII and with the assurance that XIII-2 was a good game, it had earned that by capitalizing on what was good about the original.  Instead, I am greeted with something that is praised for reasons I honestly, truly cannot comprehend on any level.  I am not having fun playing the game as I was with XIII towards the middle of it.  Maybe that will change later on, as I am probably still early on in it, but I really don't know.  I know that I'm very, very over-leveled for the area I'm in, so I'm absolutely steam-rolling everything which, honestly, kind of takes away from the fun too.  Odd as that might be, being able to stomp everything, including bosses, in your path isn't even fun in XIII-2.  Perhaps not yet, but certainly not now at the very least.