Upcoming Purchases - Early 2014 (Vita Version)

As the new year starts, there is a vigilant hope and eagerness to see the spread of releases for the shiny new systems on the market, all but eschewing everything that is not brand-new.  Regardless of what most of the internet wishes to tell you, the release schedules for the PS4 and the XBone are not the only ones that are filled with a wealth of riches.  And though you may be surprised (incorrectly so) by the fact that the Vita is one of these at the forefront of that argument, you'll likely not be able to deny it.  Better yet, you can probably prop this post up on your already-long "list of reasons to buy a Vita already" to make it that much easier on yourself.  Because if you don't own one yet, you are seriously missing out, and if nothing else, the PS4's Remote Play feature is something that has proven itself already as something you want in your household.  Unless, of course, you have the luck enough to have uninterrupted time with your TV and no need to multi-task beyond gaming at it.

Even then, you're still missing out on Gravity Rush, Soul Sacrifice, Tearaway, Persona 4 Golden, Ys: Memories of Celceta and (most of) these upcoming releases.

Danganronpa:  Trigger Happy Havoc

February 11th, 2014

I don't know a lot about Danganronpa, beyond the exclamations from early players that it's gripping and suspenseful, enjoyable, and has been referenced among the likes of 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors.  That's about all I need to know, really.  It's a murder mystery with at least a bulk of it presented as a visual novel in terms of gameplay, if not all of it, and that's fine.  That's spectacular, even.  It's clearly got style and it has people hooked, people who liked 999, and that is what I want more of.  I have not been able to throw money down on this yet and time is definitely ticking away.  I'm sure I've pissed away my chance at a Collector's Edition by now, but at least I can buy the game itself which is what I'll want most of all.  The date of the game is...troubling, however.

Toukiden:  The Age of Demons

February 11th, 2014

As you can see, Danganronpa and Toukiden have the misfortune of releasing on the same day, which is also the day that the third (final?) iteration of the maligned Final Fantasy XIII series, Lightning Returns, comes out.  I will be getting all three games because my wallet simply does not despise me enough yet.  Anyway, Toukiden is probably the least-desired of the three games, even though I still really want to get it in support.  I'm just not sure if it's a type of game -for- me since, as before stated, it's honestly far too much like Monster Hunter and while it may be a little more fast-paced, that doesn't necessarily make it better.  I still hope beyond hope that there will be something very uniquely KOEI about it, and/or that the Create-A-Warrior aspect of the game will help it along, but I'm going in low.  With any luck, that'll be the best option and I'll be pleasantly surprised.  I would surely hate it if the Anime primer they made for the game is the best thing to come from Toukiden.

Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster

March 18th, 2014

Perhaps this one is cheating a bit, considering the collection will also be available on PS3, but as I've stated before, it was announced for Vita first and, in my mind at least, has always been a Vita project.  I would suggest that that's why it took so damn long from announcement to release, because Squeenix drags their feet in the best circumstances, and the Vita's (undeserved) criticisms couldn't have made the prospect much more palatable for the company who has no issues with making quick, terrible decisions everywhere else.  Still, you cannot tell me that there's no part of you that doesn't harbor an interest, if not a full desire, to play the game in the palms of your hands as I'm sure most of you have memories of playing it on a television for the first time.  The novelty is there for sure, but Final Fantasy X at least was a pretty good game - depending on who you ask, it was the "last good Final Fantasy", others say it was an earlier one, but most don't go beyond X - and getting both games with some 'new content' afterward that may or may not be heinously terrible is a curiosity for those who never played X-2, or those with just a morbid fascination of Squeenix's continued plunge off of every rooftop they can find.

That list is only of the 'major' retail releases in the first couple months past this one, which is to say that it does not even begin to account for the digital offerings that will come in the meanwhile.  Minecraft is on the table for a release -sometime-, not to mention a few other Indie Games that have been featured, but not unleashed upon the world just yet.  It also neglects to mention the games beyond that period - Conception 2: Children of the Stars, Demon Gaze, Deception IV (currently planned for a March 25th release date, but I simply haven't looked up anything at all about it yet) and the Vita version of Dynasty Warriors 8 Complete Edition, with Over My Dead Body 2 hopefully seeing a release western this year as well, though probably towards the tail end of it.

The point is, there are plenty of games to go around and while people may not crow as loudly for the Vita ones, they should.  The games are there and they're fantastic.  As far as I'm aware, that's all we should care about, right?

still inordinately excited at the prospect of handheld Minecraft, like you don't even friggin' know

Toukiden Is On the Way West

The last time I said anything substantial about Toukiden was over a year ago when it was revealed, from which it eventually released, sold and did all that over in Japan with nary a word of western shores in its sights.  For some reason, I had thought Toukiden being localized was a foregone conclusion so when I heard that it was officially announced, I was a little confused at first.  "Didn't we know this already?," I said and it turns out that we did not.  So, good news everyone, Toukiden is releasing in North America (on carts! also digitally) as Toukiden:  [The?] Age of Demons.  (I'm seeing conflicting reports on whether or not the 'The' is there.  It is superfluous anyway.)  As far as I know, Toukiden isn't a real word, but it's damn fun to say, and a lot easier to figure out how to pronounce than Ys:  Memories of Celceta, which I learned from experience last wednesday, but that's a topic for a different night.

That's the good news about the situation.  The bad news begins to to the tune of the knowledge that the game is yet another Monster Hunter clone, but an actual really real one this time, not something that's just called a Monster Hunter clone because of poor reporting.  However everything in that trailer above screams Monster Hunter, from the segmented maps, to the giant monsters, to the four-player co-op with the bars on the upper left side literally like the MH UI (though not unique to that game) to the hub town and you get the point.  It's Monster Hunter with a side of Monster Hunter on a Monster Hunter plate in a Monster Hunter restaurant that calls itself Toukiden from KOEI and it's more than a little disappointing.

I'd personally hoped for something a little....less like that, clearly.  While my enjoyment of the KOEI games is well-known here, I don't necessarily want them to only make hack-n-slash games, so while that's what I expected with this, I would have been happy to have been wrong in most cases.  Perhaps with a proper Action-Adventure title, something along the lines of a Ninja Gaiden game, but actually fun, would have been great.  As it is, I'm assured that Toukiden will at least be a little more fast-paced than Monster Hunter which is one of my issues with it, and I'm hoping there's more variation to the game than "go here, kill monster", but I don't know what to expect and I don't want to spoil it for myself by reading impressions on the Japanese version of it.  It will serve me better to simply blindly pre-order and buy it and hopefully not be disappointed.

That is part of the other half of the bad news.  The game is releasing in February of 2014 which is right dead-smack in the middle of Christmas II which just so happens to include March this year, meaning they decided to release it the Sega way; at a time where it has the least chance of being bought 'just because'.  I'll be buying it because KOEI has so many fucking games to localize and I don't want them to be able to use their own shitty logic to leverage less and less localization projects because I fucking -want- to play these things.  I want Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends on my Vita, preferably with Dynasty Warriors 8 built into it, because I still don't know how DW8XL being on Vita/PS4 is going to work when DW8 proper is on PS3 and the selling thing of Xtreme Legends in the past has always been connecting the two games to expand on the original.  Despite my whinging, it does look like a nice game and seems capable of tricking everyone into forgetting that it's not actual Monster Hunter, but rather something close enough like it that they can just play it instead.  Because damned if a Monster Hunter wouldn't help matters.  CAPCOM.

I just want to run around maps and cut things and not worry about small areas and hrrrgh