I Still Don't Know What The Hell - Watch_Dogs

I was really, really excited about Watch_Dogs (underscore for life) when it was announced and shown off at E3.  It seemed like this really great, really new and fresh-feeling thing that was going to ratchet up new IPs again and kick some ass.  It also seemed like it was going to look damn pretty while it did it, too.

It's, uh....it's not looking like it's any of these things anymore.  In truth, I just don't know what the hell Watch_Dogs is going to be like anymore.  I'm not exactly convinced the developers do either.

Watch_Dogs doesn't know if it wants to be a badass hacker simulator, a Grand Theft Auto-wannabe with electronic shenannigans, a rudimentary third-person shooter with driving elements, or even if it wants to be a super serious spy romp, or a wacky "Jerks with powerful tools" simulator.  The game gives off the impression that it wants to be all of these things specifically to try and cater and sell to everyone, and that little experiment has been tried and tried again, always with less-than-impressive results.  And yet everyone still tries it anyway.

The above video is where the cracks in my belief -really- started to show.  To that point, Watch_Dogs had seemed to want to go down the humorless (aside from the badass Asian dude rockin' the Kazuma Kiryu look) "I WILL HAVE REVENGE" route, which can be fine if done right.  The tension, the bitterness, the internal anguish and hatred festering in the main character, they're all very gripping and driving with the right writing applied to them.  However, that's a folly to start, since an open-world game is prone to mischief the likes of which that makes grown men giggle - something that inherently destroys that mood, and one of the big problems people had with GTA IV.  (Rather, thematic disconnect all around, not just the revenge plot)

However, adding a side mission where you almost comically pass out only to awaken piloting a giant fuck-off spider-tank (with only six legs) bent on destroying everything in sight?

Nah.  Not feeling it.

At least, not from the mood that Watch_Dogs had fostered before that point.  The Not-So-Spider-Tank is silly and dumb as hell and I love it because of that, but it just doesn't make sense and I'm almost disappointed in it.  I don't want to be disappointed in a giant fuck-off tanks in a somewhat destructible environment with plenty of people and cars to stomp.  That is the direct opposite of what I want!  Yet, this is what Ubisoft has reduced me to and I'm not too happy about it.

The other main bone of contention (Literally the only other thing, really, since the "lack of coherent direction" is fairly all-encompassing) revolves around the fact that the graphics and presentation has slid around quite a lot in the time from the initial reveal (Which everyone knew was bullshit anyway) to now which has seen some -dastardly- looking screenshots and gifs (that is a comparison, btw) in the meanwhile, all of which indicating that the game is going to look...well, not -bad- (except that screenshot), but not Next Gen, which at least Assassin's Creed 4 managed to do, and quite capably.  Part of that has to do with splitting to last-gen as well, which is ultimately the wrong way about it, but part of the blame has to fall on the clear mismanagement that the game has seen in the time it's been developed.

So what do I even want from Watch_Dogs anymore?  I don't....don't really know.  I'll have to do what I do best in these situations: assemble a list.

• Game has to look at least -pretty- good.  (It's looking like it will, even though it was thought to be 1080p/60 FPS on PS4 and apparently is not)
• If this is another Third-Person Cover Shooter, I'm going to be pissed.  Thus, I don't want gunplay to be a -major- portion of the game.  It's going to be moreso than, say, Sleeping Dogs' gunplay, but I don't want GTA-levels.
• The Spider-Tank?  I don't even know....I guess I hope the other "Cyber Trips" aren't as silly and inconsistent?  Or maybe I want them to be moreso.
• I want Jordi Chin to be a major part of the story.  I do not want to go five missions without seeing that dude because he is awesome.
• A little depth to Aiden would be nice.  "REVENGE" is good and all, but....yeah.
• Cars don't control like ass.
• -Locked- Framerate.  It'll probably be 30 FPS, and if it dips below 30, that is downright embarrassing.
• I want the Electronics/Hacking stuff to be -useful- and -integral-, not a neat thing you can use -or- completely ignore in favor of BOOLETTS

Are we going to get any of those?  I don't know.  I have absolutely no clue.  I just know that I want them and if they're not present, I'm just....really going to be disappointed with the game.  Don't do this to me, Ubisoft.

I feel like asking this game to not just be a cover-based shooter at this point is moot, but goddamnit, I can hope

On the Radar - Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor

As much as it pains me to admit this, since I'm sure some circles would call for my head and/or my nerd card, I'm just not really a fan of Lord of the Rings.  I've tried several times over with the movies and the games and perhaps that's the problem, in that I've never tried the books, but it has just never worked out.  I tried watching Fellowship three times and fell asleep all three times, twice for Two Towers and I saw Return of the King in the theater, so I didn't fall asleep then.  The film, however, did stop about 2/3rds of the way through for about 10-15 minutes, though, so maybe it's a sign.  Perhaps it's just not for me, as they say.  It's a thing that happens sometimes.  So when I heard tell of a new Lord of the Rings game coming out, I didn't pay it much mind, even when there was a bit of controversy over some of the animations used in the alpha footage.

All that said, however, it wasn't until I saw a post by Chance on the subject that I decided to give it a look-see and boy am I glad I did.  While I can definitely see where the concerns lay insofar as the Assassin's Creed comparisons, I don't care.  That is because what I see looks astoundingly good, especially for a franchise that I have no particular affection towards.  Of course, it's hard to -not- look good when it cribs from the Darksiders school of thought, by being a Locke's Socks amalgamation of Lord of the Rings and these fantastic games.  Intentional or not, you can pick out the Assassin's Creed, the Arkham Asylum/City, the Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and the Hitman bits and inspect them on their own merits, and you can possibly try to determine whether or not it's cool that they are so clearly those bits placed into the stew that is Shadows of Mordor, but it's an easy decision.

When it looks like that?  Yes.  Yes it's cool.

Of course, Shadows of Mordor does bring something incredibly interesting and new to the table in the Nemesis system, which I for one am wary to believe is as fantastic as it's made out to be.  Simply because I cannot comprehend a world in which is does work as flawlessly as indicated just yet.  The Nemesis system claims to be able to randomly create a Nemesis for you that will serve as a major figure in your world that you ultimately want to kill as well as henchmen for that figure.  Not only that, but the Nemesis system promises, much like so many other games do, that all your actions and decisions matter and change the course of your story, causing your Nemesis (Nemeses?) to act accordingly.  The example used is that the player encountered two of the figures in the game early on, left the major figure to burn to death in a fire, but he survived, leaving him with a rather nasty burn, and a mean grudge.  It promises a wealth of opportunities and scenarios unique to every player and it sounds, in a word, amazing.

The cynic in me just cannot believe this is possible.  The cynic in me understands that, if you're using voiced lines, there can only really be so many instances of situations possible, since the lines have to be recorded for them all.  And the cynic in me believes that it's something that will offer less 'endless possibilities' and more 'scenarios created by creative gating' which is merely a series of binary yes/no options that are little more than littered along a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style path.  On the path in the trailer, there was a choice where the player apparently did -something- that left his Nemesis with a massive burn on his face.  That choice is a gate that takes you to a certain path in which X and Y happens.  While it gets a bit more impressive when X and Y are influenced by A, B and C or what have you, it's all something that you can see the workings of.  Depending on how many 'paths' and 'gates' they actually include in the game...it's quite possible that this 'unique experience' will not be that at all for most, which would be unfortunate and the exact thing I -don't- hope for.

I don't really like the cynic in me.  While I can see all that logic and such, I don't want to, because 'player choice affecting world-building' is something that I'm always a fan of, though few games pull it off as well as some shining examples which is an absolute shame.  It's a hard thing to pull off, I'm aware, because it's stacking variable upon variable, but it's so worth it if it actually works.  It's for that reason alone (well, the genre-blending helps) that I'm looking forward to Shadows of Mordor now, and I eagerly await some more trailers that show off the Nemesis system more - hopefully showing different ways entire scenarios can carry out or something along those lines.  Mostly just because I want to believe they can pull this off.

really, I'm just drooling at the potential to do a fictionalization of my playthrough of the game because it would be so good

XBox Games With Gold Finally Gets Good

Ever since Microsoft's Games with Gold promotion began, the games it has included have always been so very in demand and new and that's not an absolute lie or anything covered up with sarcasm.  Actually it's totally a lie covered up by sarcasm because that's kind of what I do.  Some of the bigger retail (which is the key word here) titles that have hit the service are Gears of War (as in, the first one), Assassin's Creed 2 and Halo 3, all of which would've been fantastic gets....a couple years ago or so, but right now, are merely a bit silly.  It'd be akin to Playstation Plus offering you a copy of Heavenly Sword or the original Uncharted in February.  Of course, I cannot say that won't happen, since Sony has said they won't redo games and the well will dry up at some point, but still, relevancy is a big deal and it's something that's been sorely lacking from Games with Gold.  That all changes next month.

Sleeping Dogs will be January's first Game with Gold, being free from January 1st to the 15th, where Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light will finish out the rest of the month, but that doesn't matter so much.  I'm sure it's a fine game and blah blah blah, but Sleeping Dogs.  You might remember, but I liked Sleeping Dogs.  I liked it a lot.  A whole lot!  So any and all opportunity for the game to be played by someone who otherwise has not played it (what is -wrong- with you, by the way) is a good one that I encourage.  Encouragement might sound vaguely like threatening, since it might sound like I'm saying anyone who doesn't play Sleeping Dogs for the insane price of Free deserves what they get, but of course, what I -mean- is "nothing".  In that they get nothing.  In that they lose.

Good day, sir.

Er, anyway.  XBox Live Gold is almost required for those who have a 360 and/or indeed, an XBone, so this has a potentially far reach.  As such, there better be some people picking the damn game up, if just to get ready for Triad Wars which is actually going to be like Sleeping Dogs in most aspects if a screenshot confirmed to be from Triad Wars is any indication.  Because it certainly looks like an open-world game from that at least, and I'm most happy about that.  My worry that they'd delve into something silly for a new iteration of the franchise was definitely not misplaced because of Squeenix, but I'm glad that it was at least unfounded in some way.  Still, this is definitely something to celebrate in any case - the game will only be a little over a year old when you get it for free through Games with Gold which is a milestone for the service as far as I know, and it might just be an indication of the offerings coming in the future.  Even though I don't have a 360, nor Gold because of that, it's still something that we can all hope for, because hopefully some worthy competition will keep Playstation Plus shining now that it's more or less required for the PS4 as well.  Since we'd all hate it if Sony got complacent because of that.

It's kind of amazing that Sleeping Dogs has been free on everything -but- Steam now

Weapon Farming in Dynasty Warriors 8 Made Easy

I'm constantly amazed, as I'm sure you all are, at just how much I can talk about a single Dynasty Warriors game as I'm playing it and indeed for a time thereafter.  It seems like every day brings a brand new topic about the game that I can take and pull apart until I can present it in possibly the most long-winded way possible, and it's something that I've found I can't really do for many other things.  So, whatever, I can do it and I like to do it, so that's what I'm going to do.  I'm aware that most of you are probably not as interested in Dynasty Warriors or really any flavor of game KOEI releases as I am, but I hope the deluge of content over the games is not off-putting.  Because, I mean, I'm gonna keep doing it.

Going with the theme of the last Dynasty Warriors 8 post, we're going to talk about trophies.  Or rather -a- trophy.  We're going to cover the Herculean amount of effort that goes into a single trophy called Weapon Collector that, as you might have guessed, tasks you with collecting all the weapons in the game.  You see, the whole weapon system in Dynasty Warriors 8 got a bit of an overhaul that more or less makes it a very different beast from the games before it except, in a sense, Dynasty Warriors 6.  That's not as bad a thing as that comparison might lead you to believe, however, so don't get ahead of me.  The weapons all have an element attached to them that is either Heaven, Earth or Man, which recalls to DW6's Standard, Skill and Strength types of weapons, though they don't have the same sort of effects and really I guess the only similarity is that they all shared red, green and blue and I swear I was going somewhere with that, but forgot.

Anyway, that's -one- of the categories of the weapons, though.  There's actually two beyond the Elemental Shift, and its all about rarity.  Common Weapons have Orbs, but rare weapons and the Fifth Weapon for each character have Stars instead.  These merely denote uniqueness and nothing else, because as you'll learn, each character has Four Orb weapons and Three Star weapons.  (Well, Sword has like four Star weapons, but you get one from Ambition Mode and it's not important)  You need to collect one of each of these seven weapons for every single character in the game for the trophy which is just a Silver trophy even though it will be the actual second-most grindy thing you do in the game.  Yes, Ambition Mode in all its splendor and magnificence has been bumped to third, with Bond-grinding still likely holding first place.  Though, in all honesty, Weapon Farming might just usurp it, it's that bad.

How can it be so bad, you might be innocently asking?  Well, it's pretty simple.  Of the three Star weapons per character, only -one- of them is a guaranteed drop.  That is the Fifth Weapon which have unlock conditions (readily visible in the Gallery once you've beaten every single Story Mode Stage) that you have to follow on Hard Mode.  You have to do that with every single one of the 77 characters included in the game.  That's the easy part, because the thing you want to do is get Xiahou Yuan's Fifth Weapon first.  It's called the Bow of Destruction, and if there were ever a more appropriate moniker, I don't know of it.  You see, what makes the Bow of Destruction so special is that it has an element on it called Cyclone, which is at level 10.  Cyclone breaks through an enemy's guard with charge attacks.  The weapon also has multiple charge attacks that have multiple hits within it that do Wind damage which seems to take a percentage of health rather than do -damage-.  What this means is that a single charge attack from the Bow of Destruction (one that has the multi-wind shots at least, which are C2, 5 and 6) will straight-up murder any officer, even on Chaos difficulty provided the full attack hits them.  Even if it doesn't, it's not hard to do a follow-up and basically it just means that you will not have to worry about the damage -you- do.

What about the other two Star weapons for each character?  Well, first what you want to do is get your Fortune Hunter skill leveled up, which increases your Luck.  Level 10 at minimum, though you'll likely want up to about 15 unless you're crazy and want to grind it up to 20.  Why would that be crazy?  Well, because the way you level the skill up is by defeating officers on a map after you've attained 1,500 KOs.  On the same map.  There are precious few maps that will allow you to rack up that many kills while also leaving enough chattel for you to reap in an attempt to level up the skill (Because, of course, not every single one and in fact most will not do it since it's based on some weird RNG), but if you are feeling particularly interested, then the Yellow Turban Conflict stage is what you want.

This is Zhang Jiao's Story stage and it offers a -lot- of officers plus a handy little infinite spawn of mooks that you can inflate your score with in the course of a few minutes.  All you need to do is rescue Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang and wait for Huangfu Song to change the direction of their approach.  This will divert forces to the lower left portion (south of Zhang Bao) and the square at the southernmost point before you go East into a base will just, as stated, spawn infinite amounts of soldiers after you defeat both Base captains in the neighboring areas.  Get up to 1,500 KOs (or more if you feel like it, I don't know if it affects your chances) and then go around slaughtering officers until you take down He Jin.  You should hopefully get at least 2 levels if not more, and...then you just do it again until you're happy.  Better chances if you perform the stage on Chaos Difficulty, and of course you don't have to use Zhang Jiao when selecting from Free Mode.  In fact, I would recommend it.  I personally used a Level 99 Lu Bu who has max stats and his Fifth Weapon - since it's an early map it's not difficult at all, even on Chaos, so you won't have to spam Cyclone abuse.

So now that you have Fortune Hunter up at a decent level, you'll want to equip that and go to Shu's section in Free Mode and pick the very last stage - Capture of Wei - Wei Forces.  You see, it's not simple enough that you just kill a bunch of officers for a chance at Star weapons.  No, you have to kill unique characters, since generics possess only the -barest- chance of actually dropping them, where Uniques, especially with a proper Fortune Hunter score, have a chance that approaches reasonable and contrary to what I thought prior, they have a chance of dropping weapons that -aren't- theirs.  Capture of Wei on the Wei side offers you a small-ish map (or at least a map where only 30% of it is used) that has no less than 11 Unique Officers (Jiang Wei, Huang Zhong, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhang Bao, Liu Shan, Guan Xing, Zhao Yun, Ma Chao, Zhuge Liang and Guan Ping) in a short timeframe.  Plus it has one more benefit which I will explain to you momentarily.

I've found in my runs tonight that with Level 15 Fortune Hunter, you can expect to walk away from the map with -at least- one Star weapon, which is good.  Not great since there's, you know, 154 Star Weapons in the game not counting Fifth Weapons (Jesus Christ), but it could be worse, and it's honestly a relatively short map.  There -is- a bit of an issue with the scripting, however, in that sometimes Guan Ping and Ma Chao simply refuse to advance on you or on the Wei Main Camp, and Guan Ping is ridiculously out of the way if he doesn't meaning you lose out on a potential chance unless you charge his ass, and even if he does charge, he always charges with Liu Bei (as does Zhuge Liang) who you do not want to kill immediately because it will end the stage and if you kill Liu Bei and, say, Zhuge Liang at the same time, Liang will not drop a weapon.  Which is incredibly frustrating.

The key thing about any and all forms of grinding and farming is the amount of time invested because obviously you want to cut the amount of time spent down as much as possible.  Because grinding/farming is fucking obnoxiously boring and games that rely on it for anything in excess are made by developers who are dumb and also stupid.  And are also jerks.  The good thing with Dynasty Warriors 8 and the way weapons unlock is that there's a little bit of a trick that cuts -way- down on the amount of down-time you have in between runs of the map.  As in, cuts it down to damn-near zero.  You want to know what that funny little trick is?

Let Liu Bei kill you. 

(After killing all his officers.  It's not even difficult to let it happen, since Capture of Wei - Wei Side is an end-story mission which means it's max difficulty and then you have Chaos on top of that...yeah, characters do a lot of damage.  )

You see, when you lose a stage, a message comes up asking if you'd like to restart from the beginning, which it will do so without any load time (unless there's a cinematic at the start, I imagine) allowing you to get right into it.  And at least with Star weapons (honestly haven't tested with Orb weapons, honestly don't even care) they seem to work on an unlock system in a sense.  Because they're unique, once you have them, you -have- them unless you sell them or something else.  So say you get Guan Xing to drop the Sky Splitter which is one of Guan Ping's Star weapons and then you do as I say and allow Liu Bei to kill you.  When you restart the stage, you can check your weapons and look at that, you still have the Sky Splitter.  This way, you cut out the load into the main menu, the load into the stage selection, into the character selection and loading up the stage proper.  That is a tangible amount of minutes and given that you're damn near guaranteed one or two weapons per run (if not more, one particularly generous run netted me four) using that stage and Fortune Hunter 15, it will potentially shave -hours- off of your general farming, especially if you would use a different method.  I would advise, however, that you end a Farm sessions with a victory - I doubt if it really matters if you quit to menu after a defeat rather than replaying and winning, but it's...best not to take chances, yeah?

I'm personally up to 90% of the entire Weapons Catalog filled, so it shouldn't be too terribly long before I can get to bond-grinding and then...simply being done with Dynasty Warriors 8 until Xtreme Legends comes out in some fashion.  Since I will most likely be getting it provided it's physical -or at the very least it's localized for the Vita-.  I'm being optimistic that Xtreme Legends is going to get localized (it's barely been out in Japan yet, so I'm not too worried about lack of announcement) but I wouldn't be surprised if KOEI pulls the same bullshit as they did with 7 and cut the English VAs for a little cost and cut out the Disk production for the same reason.  (Because, once again, no dubs = no disk is bullshit)  If it's localized for the Vita, unless it's just a dreadfully shitty port, I'll at least be alright with downloading that since it will be far smaller than the ~11 gigs that standard KOEI fare seems to be on PS3.  I'd say I don't know -why- I'm bothering, but it's obvious - Zhu Ran is in Xtreme Legends.  I can't wait for an official announcement so I can do another "Let's Talk About the New Characters" and probably just devote an entire post to Zhu Ran.  Just you wait.

Update!:  I figure it's appropriate to do a tl;dr of my method here for the folks who...somehow stumble across this and want to be Weapon Collecting Masochists.

• Get the Bow of Destruction - It's Xiahou Yuan's Fifth Weapon.  The game tells you how to get it.
• Buff Up a Fighter of Your Choice (Potentially Optional) - Abuse the Academy in your Ambition Mode town and use some (most/all) of that gold you've stockpiled playing every single Story Mode mission.  Get someone to Level 99, buff their stats to 1,000, go all out.  I went with Lu Bu, obv. but you go with whoever works for you.
• Upgrade Fortune Hunter - Go to Yellow Turban Conflict (Zhang Jiao's story stage) on Chaos Difficulty in Free Mode, rescue Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang and go to the southwest corner (south of Zhang Bao) where Peons spawn infinitely.  Massacre 1,500+ and then go to town on all the officers in the stage.  Repeat as needed; Bare Minimum Level 10, Recommended 15+.
• Farm Farm Farm - Go to Shu's Missions in Free Mode and pick Capture of Wei - Wei Forces (or find it in the Xuchang maps, maybe).  Equipped with Fortune Hunter and the Bow of Destruction, you should be able to wrangle 1-4 Star Weapons from the 11 officers present per run.  Let Liu Bei kill you to immediately restart the stage.  You'll retain your Star weapons and save a lot of loading time.  Repeat until the trophy dings!

As another side update, I got my Weapon Collector trophy so yay me!  Also Bond-Grinding is definitely number one most grindy, awful thing in DW8.  No question.

okay, I do still wonder sometimes why I do this to myself

Ambition Mode? Ambition Mode.

I'd put it off long enough, going into the unproven territory that was Ambition Mode because I had a rather...sinking feeling about it, looking at the trophy descriptions that associated itself with the mode.   To be fair, most of them were founded, even if not completely or as -bad- as I mad them out to be in my head.  That isn't to say it was a walk in the park or it wasn't grindy as hell, however, because believe me, it wasn't and it was in that order.  So of course I'm going to put aside a little time to delve into to intricacies of the system for any of you reading this who decide that you want to challenge it yourself.  Or because you just enjoy me being over-analytical or what have you in regards to video game things.

First off, you're playing Ambition Mode for the trophies.  Let's not kid ourselves.  There's nothing in the confines of Ambition Mode that you cannot get easily in Story or Free Mode, aside from very, very easy experience, but even that's a bit of a moot point in the long run.  So, you're opening up Ambition Mode and playing it for the trophies.  Let's take a look at which ones, then.

• Facility Construction
• Facility Expansion
• The Birth of a Leader
• Friends to the End
• The Path of Ambition
• A Collector of Rarities
• A Majestic Manner
• The Height of Prosperity
• The Ties That Bind Us
• The Land of Plenty
• Heaven and Earth
• Unwavering Ambition

There are also a few trophies that aren't Ambition Mode's per se, but you need to play it (extensively) to get them.

• Animal Collector
• Vocal Enthusiast (Oh boy, this one)
• Movie Collector

So, yes, of the games forty trophies (not counting the Plat), fifteen of them are tied up in Ambition Mode in one form or another, so really, if you're playing Ambition Mode, it's for them.   Ambition Mode is shallow and forgettable enough in the scheme of things that you don't -need- to go into it and though you can, you'll likely be disappointed by what you discover within.  It's not that Ambition Mode is bad in so many words or ideas, but it's just that it's the same sort of set up as it was in Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends and even Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce.  It's a framing device that pretends to move and grow with your actions, but to say that it does so in a meaningful, vibrant or dynamic way is being a bit too generous.  Rather, it simply feels...mechanical.

The end-all goal of Ambition Mode is to build a Tongquetai to house the Emperor who will be attracted to your lands because the Tongquetai is going to be magnificent.  And yes, if you're googling Tongquetai, you're wondering just what in the fuck I'm talking about because the majority of the entries seem to be about a movie called "The Assassins" which is exactly not what you want the Emperor around!  Of course, it's not some sort of meta-commentary or anything, the building is just, of course, some really nice looking mansion deal.  Anyway, to get the materials to build the Tongquetai, you have to first build up facilities in a little poor start-up town, of course, and they will eventually...just sort of -have- the materials somehow.  Just go with it.

So to get a Tongquetai, you have to build Facilities.  How do you build Facilities?  Well...actually you crush your enemies and force them to fight for you recruit them to your cause.  But how do you build -up- Facilities (which is the important part)?  You gather materials.  There are two types of Materials in Ambition Mode:  Weapon and Facility and I'll give you two guesses as to which one you should be paying attention to.  This is what you are going to spend 80% of your time in Ambition Mode fretting over, is getting goddamn Materials for your facilities to level them up for their benefits and also just to get the Tongquetai so you're able to focus on the even more grindy bits of the mode.  Because yes, getting Materials and in fact just getting your Tongquetai/the City built up is the least grindy portion of the entire subset of the game.  Wrap your head around that one.

Now, this is a good time to stop for a moment and breakdown the -other- things you need to 'collect' for Ambition Mode, and the perils thereof.  On top of Materials to build up Facilities, you need Allies to necessitate their construction in the first place and Fame to allow you to recruit more Allies because apparently they're your posse and you can only have a big posse if you're famous and it's not like you get famous for -having- a big posse or that fame and followers come hand-in-hand or anything silly.  Anyway, I'm sure you can see the sort of feed-the-meter logistics at work, and it's not going to surprise you in the least when I say that the missions in Ambition Mode are geared towards getting you the specified resources in direct transfusions of 15-30 minute battles.  (That usually take anywhere from 1-20 minutes to complete)  As such, you have missions that grant you Fame moreso than the others, missions that grant you more enemies to defeat and thus more Allies to recruit, and missions where Materials drop more often.

There's a problem with all of this, however.  Honestly, there's a problem with nearly every facet of this whole set-up, unfortunately, and it's almost hilarious in its own ineptitude.  KOEI commits a cardinal sin against common sense in regards to collecting and building that's so basic it makes my head hurt.  Ambition Mode's mission rewards aren't that great on their own because the goal is for you to run through multiple in a sitting, since you can chain battles.  This is important to know.  Over the course of 3-5 battles, of course, you're going to have a -lot- of gains to your totals instead of just the piddly one battle.  However, there are several times when this is inadvisable to do.  Like, say, whenever you fill up one of the meters.  Because you have to physically go back to camp, wreck your streak, just so the game can show you a building going up and saying "Yay, now you can gain more fame arbitrarily!" before you can actually gain more fame.  So...chaining battles becomes less a necessity for actually building up your town and more solely a necessity for fucking trophies.

Let's get back to those, shall we?  Specifically the ones titled The Birth of a Leader, The Path of Ambition and Unwavering Ambition, which are gained from doing 5, 20 and 50 chain battles respectively.  Note that at any point before actually finishing the City and whatnot when you don't even have to worry about Fame and all that, doing 20 battles will push you to your meter in at least one category, meaning you're wasting a -lot- of time in all reality.  This is to say nothing of the fact that the Animal Collector trophy is -also- tangled in the Chain Battle mess since you have to do 30, 60, 90 and 100 chain battles for four unique animals that count towards the trophy you get for collecting animals.  They are Shadow Runner, Hex Mark, Red Hare and the War Elephant respectively and of those, Red Hare is the one that is worth it, meaning a lot of people who don't -know- what's up will get Red Hare and then immediately fucking quit doing chain battles because they're terrible and discover that "whoops, you were ten battles away from never having to chain battle again!"

The really funny bit about this all is that because of the silliness with Battles in general and their drops, and Chaining Battles, you could end up spending a lot of time on the Battle portion of the mode when really the most lucrative thing you could do is just focus on your town as much as possible.  The only thing you really -need- from battles is Allies and Fame which you're going to earn over the course of everything else -anyway-, so you don't really have to make special outings for them specifically.  Materials, however, are another matter entirely.  You -could- spend about a minute total with loading and actually doing a mission to end up with ~2-6 Facility Materials, or you could be smart.  Being smart requires you to have the Barracks (one of the core buildings), the Stables (optional, really, but necessary for max yield), the Farmer (again, -technically- optional, but you want it) and the Merchant which is another core building.  Once you have these, you are ready to begin farming.

One of the nice things about the Merchant, or the only nice thing about it I should say, is that it lets you exchange Materials for the other variety of it.  So Weapon Materials for Facility Materials and vice versa.  One weapon material exchanges to two facility materials, which is very good and it works the other way around for weapon materials again which is less good, but you don't -need- weapon materials.  What this ratio means is that what you -want- are Weapon Materials because they are vital for your Facility Material gathering.  Your Barracks allows you to send troops off to other areas from whence they will return with things, specifically Materials of a certain type.  That means you want to send them off to Weapon Material places.  Similarly, feeding the animals in the Stables gives you materials that are sometimes weapon and sometimes facility so either way you win, technically.  The supervisor that you assign at the Farmer also has a chance of giving you up to ten materials as well.

So the routine, essentially, is going to your Barracks, getting materials and sending them out again, going to the Stables, getting Materials, going to the Farmer to check if the Supervisor gives you materials and then going to the Merchant.  All told, you have a chance to have something like 24-30 Weapon Materials from the three places you visit around your town which translates into 48-60 Facility Materials.  Low-level buildings require 1-2 Materials to level up and higher leveled ones (40-50 generally, 50 is max Level) require 9-10.  Either way, you can make a nice dent with 48-60 Materials and the time it takes to gather them is negligible.  Especially compared to the minute or so that you'll spend just getting half a dozen from actually having to -work- for them.  Regardless, the one tip that has to be echoed for this process is for the love of God, don't fall for KOEI's Trap Card.

The Merchant, as one of the four core buildings, will need to be leveled up to max for the Tongquetai to be built.  So you, naturally, will probably just go "Well, I'll do that first" because why not?  Well, you don't want to do that because at level 50, the Merchent goes into late-game mode by assuming you don't need Facility Materials anymore and thus drops the exchange rate between Materials to 1:1.  Good for getting Weapon Materials, bad for getting Facility Materials.  It will cause you to need to go at this twice as long and that's something you want to avoid at all costs.  I'm sure I don't have to tell you that.  So yes, the moral of the story is Don't Level up the Merchant to 50 until the very end.  You'll thank me for that.

So you do Chain Battles for Animals for Animal Collector, you gather up allies and fame and materials to eventually upgrade the town to full (which gains you Facility Construction and Facility Expansion for your first of each respectively), gaining the trophies mentioned a few paragraphs ago as well as A Collector of Rarities (for completing all the Duels which show up every four missions until you've beaten them all), A Majestic Manner (Max Fame), The Height of Prosperity (All the Facilities built), The Ties that Bind Us (all 720 allies recruited) and Heaven and Earth (Finally complete the Tongquetai and welcome the Emperor to your city).  Doing that will get you the Ending Credits for Ambition Mode which counts as a movie for the Movie Collector trophy, given you've already beaten the Story Modes completely to see each Kingdom's Historical and Hypothetical Credits.

That leaves you with The Land of Plenty which you get after gaining 1,000 Materials which...you will do eventually.  It also leaves you with Vocal Enthusiast, and Friends to the End.  Friends to the End is easy enough - gain max bond with one of the 78 other characters in the game, which you will do by toting them around from battle to battle as your bodyguard.  Vocal Enthusiast is one of those tricky, roundabout trophies, however.  You see, when you get max bond with an officer, you unlock some of their voice clips in the Gallery.  Which is well and good, but you don't unlock them -all- for that character, because you see, what you have to do is max bond with that character.

Twice.

Once as a Male officer, once as a Female Officer.  Vocal Enthusiast requires you to have unlocked every voice clip in the game.  Which means gaining Max Bond with Every Officer in the game.  Twice.  Remember how I said Material Grinding was the least grindy bit of Ambition mode?  There you go.

So yes, Ambition Mode is....well, it's honestly a neat concept, but goddamn if KOEI does not how to properly introduce Sim elements to the game.  Which is hilarious when you consider that KOEI fucking specializes in Sim games.  But that's just one of the things that makes KOEI the company that it is.  The terrible, awful, no good, very bad company that it is.  That I will continuously buy products from because goddamnit, nobody else is making them.

Vocal Enthusiast is a bronze trophy, by the way, just as one last 'fuck you' from KOEI

Oh. Well Then.

Not too terribly long, I got all bent out of shape over Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, since it was reported that the PS4/XBone versions were going to be digital-only and that's kind of a bad thing.  For reasons that I went into with a lot of words that ended up boiling down to "The Gaming world just isn't ready for this nigh-evangelised 'Digital Future' but more importantly I'm most definitely not ready for it, goddamnit" because I really really want to play every single MGS game ever always.  All of that remains true, of course, because Internet Infrastructure has not magically become better in the weeks since, nor is it showing any signs of magically coming to ultimate power any time soon either.  Unfortunately and fortunately.  (Since even if Infrastructure got better, I'd probably still be fucking stuck)

Good news has come out for everyone, however, as not only does Ground Zeroes have a release date for North America, but it has pricing and release details that are a bit different than previously reported for good ol' Europe.  First off, the game comes out March 18th, 2014 across PS3 and 4, the 360 and the XBone.  PC players...get to keep waiting for REVENGEANCE, I assume.  (Please buy it when it comes out.)  Much like Europe, there's a bit of a price variance not only between current and last gen platforms, but physical and digital as well.  The PS3 and 360 versions retail at $30 for Physical and $20 Digital which is pretty much what I figured would happen in that it's exactly the same as the European price, except they switched denomination markers.  Sorry Europe!

The good bit comes in, however, when you see that, yes, the Digital Versions for the PS4 and XBone versions of Ground Zeroes are $30 for some reason, but there are actual physical versions of the game as well which will retail for $40, a full $20 more for a prettier version of the game on a disk instead of a digital PS3 purchase.  In another complete 180 from previous reportings, there's apparently going to be something extra in the Physical versions, though if that's just the Next-Gen ones, I don't even know.  Regardless, there's going to be a box with a PS4 disk in it that has Ground Zeroes on it that I am going to one day stare at and debate whether or not I should purchase it.  On the one hand, I'm very, very glad that it's going to be something I -can- buy and play, but on the other hand, it's a prologue that could be shorter than the Tanker section of MGS2, and it's $40 when a digital version of the PS3 version is half that for reasons, and while I -want- to play it in stunning visuals with the Dualshock 4 and all that, I'll need to convince myself a little more.  Also, I'll be concerned about a package deal for Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain whenever that ends up coming out.  (Likely around a year later, I'm guessing)

Still, it's good to know that I have the option if I decided to go that route because I likely will because I have no will-power.  Though I have to wonder what the extra bit in the cases is going to be, because I highly doubt it's going to be the Exclusive DLCs mentioned for both systems.  The Deja Vu mission for Playstation and the Jamais Vu DLC for XBox both look great, even though I swing more towards the Jamais Vu one because REVENGEANCE, and it kills me to think that I -won't- get to play it.  It's...not the same as more REVENGEANCE, of course, but it's close.  At least Konami is still acknowledging the game and hopefully the hopes of a sequel will end up panning out, because I will buy the absolute fuck out of it.  On the other hand, more 'exclusive' DLC for the Boxed versions on top of platform-exclusive DLC?  That's...that's going a bit crazy with it.  Though we are not exactly surprised, I should think.

crazy conspiracy theory, "David Hayter Voicepack DLC" - it'll never happen, but goddamnit if we're not all hoping

Okay, This Trend Needs to Stop Before It Starts

It's been known for a while that Metal Gear Solid V would be yet another of the Cross-Gen titles coming out, releasing for both PS3 and 360, but PS4 and XBone as well.  It's also been known that Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, the prologue to the actual meat of MGS V, The Phantom Pain, would be releasing beforehand due to it being a prologue and all.  That was roughly all the information that we knew to this point, however, and that finally changed today....kind of.

The release window has narrowed from "2014" to "Spring 2014" which is, of course, considerably more focused, but it's clearly still not ready for an official release just yet.  We also have prices....in a sense, and this is where things get a bit tricky.  Current gen prices for the packaged versions of the game (meaning PS3/360 disks) will be £30, which roughly translates to about $48, assuming they don't do that thing they do where they just exchange £ and $.  Current gen prices for digital versions of the game, however, will be £20, which roughly translates to about $32.  And then there's an entry for the price of the Next-Gen downloadable versions, which is the aforementioned £30 or ~$48.  So, what's the price for the Next-Gen packaged version?  Uhh..

Well, apparently there won't fucking be one.

It's already been confirmed elsewhere from the linked article - Ground Zeroes is going to be Digital-Only on the PS4/XBone and I have only one thing to say to that:  Fuck that.

Next Gen games are going to be fucking huge - Killzone:  Shadow Fall is just south of 40 GB as a compressed file (down from a hefty 290 GB) as an example - and I can't imagine that Ground Zeroes, the first Open-World Metal Gear Solid title is going to be an exception to that, prologue or not.  My thoughts on digital-only games has been well-covered at this point (even if I understand that it's a necessity -sometimes-, and can acknowledge that there are varying degrees of problem areas to it) but I think we can all agree that downloading 40 gigs is simply unfeasible for a majority of the people playing games out there.  Not only is there speed issues to consider (since we're not all blessed with the ability to pay for wonderful internet), but there is that whole pesky issue about Data Caps that has not gone away by some sort of magic or sorcery.  So it's at this point that I would like to ask Developers to kindly pull their heads out of their goddamn asses.

I'm going to reiterate the very point I made back when Microsoft assumed the internet was magical and ever-present around the entire goddamn world:  It's fucking not.  Internet infrastructure is actually pretty piss-poor in the United States (not to mention neighboring Canada and Mexico) since the farther out from a major city you get (not even the semi-major cities) there is a drastic drop-off in speed, capacity and what have you.  Everyone in the industry seems to forget this constantly, because, and I'm just guessing here, a lot of developers are based out of major cities.  I can see how it's possible that it's easy to forget what you -don't- have to deal with, but that doesn't make it any better.  Still, I think even some of these people would have an issue downloading 40-50 Gig games on the regular.  So hopefully this little idea of "Digital Future" stays in the future now as it has done so already, because we just are not ready for it yet.

I mean, seriously, Ground Zeroes is going to be fucking huge even if it's supposed to be a 'short' game are we kidding anyone thinking otherwise

Some Encouraging Project Spark News

It seems that Project Spark, Microsoft's game-building game, will not require XBox Live Gold to play in any of its versions on the 360, PC or XBone.  Seeing as that is a Microsoft Studio title, as first-party as can be, that's quite a surprising development, but not an unwelcome one.  It also makes a lot of sense to do which I posit is most of why it's surprising.  Despite me being a little disappointed in Project Spark, or what little of it has been shown off, I'm still nonetheless interested in it, especially now that the XBone left Crazytown and is a viable, purchasable console now.  Because I am just a whore for the concept of creating things even though I'm terrible at actually executing the creation thereof.

Of course, that's kind of where the rub is - everything points to being able to play Project Spark without XBox Live Gold.  Semantics are a wonderful, terrible thing, of course, so one could actually infer that silver members can only do that - play the game.  Play other creations people have made.  The worry, then, is that you will still need Gold to actually be able to create and share your little games that look suspiciously like Fable even though it's supposed to be set in space or something.  It would certainly make sense, since it makes -more- sense than Microsoft being cool where it concerns this game.  It's not that we want to be cynical, that we don't want to believe, but, well, I think we've all touched the fire one too many times, and we're pretty sure it's still going to burn.

We're watching you, Microsoft.  Keeping an eye on you in case you go all Crazytown again.

yes, it was a short post but what else is there to say about a game that has like three minutes of footage out there

Well, That's a Problem - Next-Gen Upgrades Can't Keep SP Saves

Various publishers and companies have come out saying that they'll be offering a "Next-Gen Upgrade" for certain games that are going to be released in a way that straddles this gen and next - releasing as PS3 and PS4 games both, for example.  Generally, the situation is that you have your current gen disc, enter a code, pay $10 and you get a digital copy (I believe) of the Next-Gen version of the game on your account which you can start using whenever you pick up your PS4 or XBone.  The knowledge that all your Multi-player stuff will transfer over because it's half-hosted from a server is fairly common, so I figure at least some of us assumed (or simply didn't think about) Single-player working similarly across generations for some reason or another.  Actually having it pointed out makes you wonder why you thought it was possible in the first place, when it probably should've been obvious that single player saves just won't carry over next-gen.

Then, if you're me, you think of the Vita and PS3 cross-save and realize that they're saves for the same game running on two completely different pieces of hardware and go right back to wondering why it won't work out.  But that's really not the point, the point is that you're going to end up starting from scratch in anything but Multi-player if you jump in on this upgrade deal.  Which, for games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, it's not a big deal, but for something like Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Watch_Dogs, where the main content is Single-Player, well....it seems like a bad idea.  Or at least one (more) reason to skip this gen's version of the game and jump head-long into next-gen which...okay, yeah that is probably the reason for this since we obviously know it -could- be done if they wanted it to be done.  Most likely.

It's certainly turned me off from picking up Watch_Dogs until some random point in the future that I don't really know about just yet.  It could be that I'll just pick it up in January when I grab my PS4 as something to tide me over until inFamous:  Second Son, but I might even just skip it then as well - impressions seem to dwindle down more and more with each and every trailer and video that comes from the game as it seems to stray more and more from "Do cool shit with the internet" to "Shoot mans and pretend it's high-tech Grand Theft Auto".  Which, there's probably nothing wrong with high-tech Grand Theft Auto, but it certainly seems a lot less interesting and innovative now than it did originally, with the whole 'internet' thing being relegated to a tertiary or even optional tactic when it really should be the main focus....and done so in a way that's not messy or obfuscated.  That'll be the true test of the game, I suspect.

As for Assassin's Creed IV:  Black Flag, well, you already know my opinions on a good grip of the Assassin's Creed games, so I will be staying away from the game until it's bargain-priced as I do with every AC game except Liberation.  Hell, I haven't even grabbed Assassin's Creed 3 yet, so by the time AssFlag is up for a purchase from me, I'll be getting the PS4 version anyway.  I'm not sure I can think of any other games that straddle the gap that have announced an upgrade system like that, but it looks a lot less tantalizing now than it did in a lot of ways.  You gotta wonder if there's going to be any games that buck this trend, however.  Microsoft's Project Spark is a big one since it's coming out for 360 as well as the XBone and...well, it basically revolves around devoting hours of your life to create something, so I would imagine upgrading to a blank slate would be less than ideal and I doubt all of that information is going to be considered "Multi-player" so it would be stored on a server, but considering the original XBone goal...who knows?

It's just a weird situation halfway between "Well, duh" and "But wait", and it's only worth mentioning because it could very well impact your purchasing decisions on at least a couple games.  Like I said, it's definitely pushed my purchase of Watch_Dogs back a little, and similar SP-heavy games will likely be bought on the Next-Gen systems straight-away rather than paying the $10 extra for a 'second' copy of the game.  Because I really don't see myself as an edge case in this scenario.

it'd be different if the game was like Sleeping Dogs, I'd play the shit out of that twice

Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD Announced, Nobody is Surprised

Ubisoft announced quite a few things yesterday, but the one bit that caught my eye was the announcement of Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD, a port of the previously Vita-exclusive game for PS3, 360 and PC.  I guess it shouldn't be surprising, since it was actually a pretty good game and being solely on the Vita wasn't doing Ubisoft any favors, but I can't help feeling like I should be even the tiniest bit angry about this, being the staunch Vita supporter that I am.  I mean, here's one of the few 'mainstream' exclusives worth a damn and that exclusivity (plus being made retroactively the 'shitty' version by comparison) just went out the window.  One of the big things you could point at for just about anyone enticed by the idea of a Vita but needing a tipping point and make jazz hands over, and now not so much.  I -should- be bothered by it.

Clearly, I'm not, though.  I'm not quite sure what it is about Liberation on the whole, but it's effectively in the "Would not play again" portion of my brain and I just don't know why.  Shortly after I reviewed the game, I mentioned having a bit of fatigue over talking about it and it simply turns out that that never really went away.  Even bringing this post up last night as I intended to do it up (instead of finishing it tonight) brought about a strange weariness that, stacked on my everyday exhaustion simply proved to be too much.  That I'm managing tonight is nothing less than a miracle of sorts, or something a little less dramatic if you're into that sort of thing, I suppose.  Still, it's something weird to say the least - it's not often that you'll find a game that I don't want to talk about as with a good game, I can extol its virtues and with a bad game, I can loudly rant about its inadequacies.  Liberation is somewhere in the middle and I really only have one guess as to how it managed that.

I was....not a fan of Liberation's Multi-Player and that's putting it mildly.  To be entirely frank, I think it was an abomination unto common sense, and how it was ever presented as a good idea is foreign to me.  It seemed as if it was designed in the depths of the underbelly of some Zynga sweatshop, and brought before a Ubisoft exec by some mole-person scraping across the ground so as not to offend the sensibilities.  Shaped in a grotesque fashion, it was surely something to be rejected, to be shunned and mocked, but instead, the exec shrugged and presented it as something proper, allowing the caitiff to return to his duties with a rare sense of satisfaction, and undeserved at that.  A lot of pointless clicking and posturing that was all erased as soon as a faction the Assassins won a 'match' where everything was then reset so you could waste time with it yet again.  Somehow, someway, it managed to make its way into the final product that was Assassin's Creed: Liberation, and that is definitely a grievous injustice upon humanity that will hopefully be righted in the future somehow.  I should hope that it's simply stricken from the HD remake, but I highly doubt that it will be so, you know....enjoy that, whoever is going to buy that.

Of course, there are actual improvements being made to the game beyond the obvious of making it prettier to look at, even if it wasn't much of a slouch on the Vita.  Facial animations will be retouched, the frame-rate (that I didn't have much of a problem with, to be honest) will be locked at something proper, gameplay tweeks to combat and free-running and apparently each mission has been tweeked a bit as well.  Joystiq makes mention of new missions, but I don't see any information about it beyond that, though I do recall a few areas in the game where another mission for story-pacing would have been appreciated.  Likely that's the type of thing that will be done....or simply other missions along the Citizen E vein since those are cheap, easy and interesting.  I doubt I'm going to pay much attention to it, however - the chances of the new content coming to Liberation on the Vita, even as paid DLC, is slim and I doubt that I'd pick it up even if it were offered.  I simply have no intention on playing the game ever again.

That's not to say that you shouldn't either, of course.  I stand by my original assessment of "Just as good as any other Assassin's Creed game, for better or worse" because I would also never really go back and play those all over again either.  I tend to finish them off as best as I can (fuck you, Brotherhood and your online bullshit) and then wash my hands of them entirely which...doesn't say a whole lot of my opinion on the franchise as a whole, it would seem.  That's just my opinion and my way of playing it, of course, and seeing as I keep coming back, I must have -something- that I like about it all.  Perhaps some day I'll figure that out.  Maybe after I buy Assassin's Creed 3 for $20 somewhere and play through it despite likely not enjoying what it has to offer if my pattern recognition isn't off.  Or maybe somewhere else along the line!  I kind of mussed up the point - Liberation was pretty cool so I hope the people who can play it now without a Vita (also known as people who are missing out) will enjoy it despite its flaws that every AC game is requisite to have.

I think it's the drop-stab, because that never, ever gets old

Mighty No. 9 is Mega Man, Funded, Awesome

It's simultaneously easy and incredibly difficult to believe that you have not heard of Mighty No. 9 at this point - on the one hand, it's been a busy weekend in North America at least, and that does sort of make it difficult to find out about Kickstarter news unless you're looking for it, but on the other hand, it feels like everybody already knows about Mighty No. 9.  So for those of you who don't know what the game it, it is basically Mega Man.  It looks like Mega Man, it has the same general concept as Mega Man, the same general playstyle as Mega Man and the same original creator as Mega Man.  Yes, Keiji Inafune, with his company Comcept USA, took to Kickstarter to get funding for the game known as Mighty No. 9 and did so in quite a swift amount of time - just around two days.  For a $900,000 goal on a busy weekend as it has been (PAX and Labor Day), it's rather impressive and it still has a run of 28 days before it closes down and locks in the exact final amount which, thanks to stretch goals, will more or less decide just how much Mighty No. 9 we're going to get.

The base game....well, why don't I let one of the Kickstarter Bullet Points explain that, yes?

• You play as Beck, the 9th in a line of powerful robots, and the only one not infected by a mysterious computer virus that has caused mechanized creatures the world over to go berserk. Run, jump, blast, and transform your way through six stages (or more, via stretch goals) you can tackle in any order you choose, using weapons and abilities stolen from your enemies to take down your fellow Mighty Number robots and confront the final evil that threatens the planet!

Blatant Mega Man comparisons aside (emphasis theirs, by the way, not mine), it says right there that the original goal is for six stages, but that seven and eight can be added through  the Stretch Goals and is specifically the first one at $1,200,000.  At this point in time, it's -almost- there even, being at $1,141,413 as I'm writing this (and updating constantly as I continue writing, and it wouldn't surprise me if it's fully to that goal by the time I'm finished).  It's not broken apart or anything - that stretch goal is the one that will add the stages for Mighty No. 7 and 8 and thus more or less make it even closer to the Mega Man games we all already know and love.  The other Stretch Goals include Mac and Linux versions (btw, base game is set only for PC, however...), New Game Plus and "Turbo Mode", a Making-Of Documentary and, of course, PS3/360/Wii U versions.  There are also two Stretch Goals which are....mysteries?  I guess?  Perhaps surprises along the way to spice things up or something.

If there's absolutely anything to be disappointed in at looking at Mighty No. 9, it's simply that the Console Versions are the very last Stretch Goal, set in at the $2,500,000 mark, and that there's no 3DS or Vita love, nor Next-Gen love aside from the Wii U.  Of course, Kickstarters are malleable by nature and the feedback on their official Twitter has stated that versions for all the consoles left out are possible, depending on funding and feedback.  The official statement re: PS4/XBone versions is that they're not planning on them due to lack of knowledge about the consoles which....is understandable since they're not even out yet, buy by the time Mighty No. 9 comes out, they will have been and for...a little while.  Obviously, I am that guy, always saying how I want everything on my Vita so this is certainly no exception, but mostly because it's a damn good fit.  Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X (which was free through Plus a while back) played wonderfully on the PSP (and the Vita as well) so Vita/3DS versions of the game just make sense, so long as they can work them properly.

Otherwise, I just haven't looked into it all that much because I don't really....need to.  It's a new, improved version of Mega Man with fun, new little twists and such, but is so much built on a foundation that I already know very well.  Conveniently, that means that I know it's going to be good with some level of certainty, which is nice to have.  However, as much as I like looking at Kickstarter projects - I prefer the ability to actually buy them when they're available or, in some cases, while they're on their way to being released, not when they're mere theories and concepts on paper and computer documents and files.  But I'm old-fashioned like that, it seems, especially when I consider that notion to be a silly one, since there are people who will un-ironically agree with my assertion that I'm old-fashioned because of that.  But that sort of stuff just makes my head hurt anymore.

Anyways, Mega M- Mighty No. 9.  It's going to be a thing and it's likely going to be fantastic.  Let's just see where all it ends up landing and how the Kickstarter plays out.  Certainly going to be interesting if nothing else.

I personally just love how tongue-in-cheek against Capcom the whole thing is

Grand Theft Auto Online Looks Amazing

So, last month, I pointed out that seeing a Gameplay Trailer for Grand Theft Auto V made me really excited for the game, to the point where I didn't quite know how it could get better.  If you would have told me that it would get better with the Multi-Player Portion of it, I would have called you silly, but damned if it didn't happen.  I'm not sure if it would be better for you to watch the above video first to see what I mean, or if you should read the Overview from the official site first to give context to the video before you see it, so I'm just going to give you both and let you decide.  Either way, both need to be consumed by your brain in some fashion, I urge this at least, so keep that in mind.

Grand Theft Auto Online is a dynamic and persistent online world for 16 players that begins by sharing gameplay features, geography and mechanics with Grand Theft Auto V, but will continue to expand and evolve after its launch with new content created by Rockstar Games and the Grand Theft Auto community. Grand Theft Auto Online takes the fundamental Grand Theft Auto concepts of freedom, ambient activity and mission-based gameplay and makes them available to multiple players in an incredibly detailed and responsive online world.

In Grand Theft Auto Online, players have the freedom to explore alone or with friends, work cooperatively to complete missions, band together to participate in activities and ambient events, or compete in traditional game modes with the entire community, all with the personality and refined mechanics of Grand Theft Auto V.

Players can invest in their character through customizing their appearance, improving their stats, owning customized vehicles, purchasing personal property, and taking part in missions, jobs and activities to earn reputation and cash to open up new opportunities to rise through the criminal ranks. The world of Grand Theft Auto Online will constantly grow and change as new content is added, creating the first ever persistent and dynamic Grand Theft Auto game world.

Access to Grand Theft Auto Online is free with every retail copy of Grand Theft Auto V and launches on October 1st.

The keywords here are "dynamic" and "persistent online world" which are things that have been thrown around here lately for other such things like Destiny and possibly TitanFall, which are meant solely to imply something of an MMO-experience without stating it's going to be an MMO.  But let's face it - Destiny is an MMO, so is TitanFall kind of and GTAO is going to basically be a Grand Theft MMO, and you know what?  That's fine.  Excellent, even.  It's sort of one of those things that you never knew you wanted until it was thrust into your face and then all you wanted was to feast upon its wonder and splendor.  Or, you know, something that sounds a little less weird.
Grand Theft Auto IV's online portion was entertaining in its own right - giving you the ability to free roam the entirety of Liberty City with your buddies doing whatever the hell you pleased, but its short-coming was that there was....not that much to -do-.  There were multi-player modes you could join, sure, things that were specifically there to foster a multi-player mentality, but if you wanted to just faff about, then that's all you -could- do.  Have little impromptu drag races that aren't scored except with your collective imaginations.  See who can launch themselves the furthest from a motorcycle thanks to the wonderful physics engine.  Things that, while entertaining, were things that you had to figure on yourself.  That is where Grand Theft Auto Online's MP sounds as if it's going to shine, and where the MMO portion of it comes into play in practice.

Quests Missions that you can take with a crew of others, possibly -against- other crews, dynamic mini-missions like being able to properly knock over small stores (which I think I only did in Vice City, but I imagine you could do it in San Andreas and -maybe- IV as well?  Probably not) and take on other such activities has a wealth of potential.  It lends some legitimacy and depth to the experience overall when there's something to work towards (getting money and property) and having easy and fun avenues towards that (mini-jobs like robbery and proper missions), and that would be fine on its own.  Add to that the 'experience' of GTA with the little vignettes of characters (actual fleshed-out ones) telling you where to go and why, giving you back-story on the situation, and it's truly going to be something to look out for.  Hell, it might even be something fun to much around with on your -own- if it's as involved and dynamic as it seems (which might be how I deal with it regardless, what with the crap internet and all)

The only 'hitch' involved with GTAO is the fact that it's not actually going to launch alongside Grand Theft Auto V, despite being something that you can technically access from the disk, presumably.  Which I'm hoping does not mean (yet thinking that it does mean) that the game will be available as a download after-the-fact that's not even included in the game's hefty mandatory installation (8 gigs!) for both PS3 and 360.  I'm hoping that that installation is, of course, putting aside a lot of room -for- GTAO, in which you'll only have to download the 'access key' once it goes live on October 1st and updates/patches thereafter, but I'm wary and I'll reserve the right to wonder until we get a little clarification on that.  Regardless, so long as GTAV and GTAO combined don't take up an absurd amount of Hard Drive space, it shouldn't be too much of an issue, and from what I've seen here, it'll be worth it and any hassle that it might bring.

oh man, I just want to be the wheelman for a bunch of thefts, that would be so awesome

Even More Indie Confusion

Brian Provinciano of Retro City Rampage fame is one of the many suspicious of Microsoft's new plan.

It seems Sony's still the only one out there getting it right in terms of Indies, though Microsoft recently announced that they're making strides in the right direction....if you believe spin at its face, that is.  Essentially, what Microsoft has announced is that Self-Publishing will be possible for games on the XBone and on top of that, every single XBone console will eventually double as a dev kit.  This would allow you to run down to the store, buy an XBone, take it home and work whatever voodoo that involves to turn it into a dev kit/debug unit.  Because it's not going to be as simple as flipping a switch and 'woooo suddenly I'm a game developer'.  Not to mention that allowing you to be able to mess with the innards of the XBone as you would anything with code and such with reckless abandon would open all sorts of unsavory doors, so there's obviously some bits that haven't been mentioned just yet.  Apparently this was supposed to be big news at Gamescom, but it just so happened to leak out beforehand.  Mysteriously.

"Suspicion" seems to be the operative word in terms of reactions among both consumers and Indie Developers alike, and it's not unwarranted, of course.  Even without Microsoft's numerous foot-in-mouth moments subsequently followed by furious back-peddling in what comes off as a desperate display of "PLEASE LOVE US", their previous attempt at the Indie Scene with XBox Live Indie Games was less-than-stellar in concept and execution.  An annual fee allowed you access to the development tools with which you could eventually create a working game for the service that was then checked by other XNA developers (I believe) for QA purposes (pretty much, I just heard Zeboyd asking/talking about "Peer Review" for the XBLIG versions of their games before release) before being unceremoniously placed into the roster next to the rest of the games similarly added without much regard to grouping or visibility.  Of course, that is kind of how these things go, things like the App Store and such that allow 'self-publishing' in this way, which is akin to "Yeah, just kind of put it out there and make sure we get our cut for storage" which is...less than ideal.

Whether or not Microsoft's plan for the XBone will be like XBLIG but 'better' or something else entirely that might actually be good has yet to be seen and will likely remain under wraps even beyond Gamescom.  It's highly doubtful this system will be able to go up and running by launch, of course, and first-hand experience is really where it's going to count, as well as how Microsoft handles the marketplace thereafter.  It -does- sound like Microsoft is making strides in that area in a sense as they previously announced that all the games will be in the 'games' section of the store, thus no "XBLA goes -here-" and "XBLIG goes over -there-", but really that was never the biggest problem.  The biggest problem with indies on the 360 was that you...basically never knew when the games went up because they went up 'whenever'.  Sony has the right of it here, I think - Games go up Tuesday, Mobile games go up Wednesday.  If you're even a little familiar with your Playstation devices and such, you know that, so you'll know to check new releases and you'll be able to find all the new games, indie or otherwise, held within.  Then they also have an Indies Section that, well, actually has visibility as well.

Something else that's curious is that Microsoft seems to be promising full compatibility of the wide spectrum of extra essentials to Indies as well.  Specifically, Mark Whitten, VP of the XBox Division had this to say:

"Our vision is that every person can be a creator. That every Xbox One can be used for development. That every game and experience can take advantage of all of the features of Xbox One and Xbox LIVE. This means self-publishing. This means Kinect, the cloud, achievements. This means great discoverability on Xbox LIVE. We'll have more details on the program and the timeline at gamescom in August."

This is new in terms of Microsoft's treatment of indies for the most part.  Even Kinect integration, something that obviously could have happened on the 360 seems new unless my googling has failed to inform me of a time when XNA developers were allowed to work with the device for 360 purposes.  Additionally, add me to the list of people who believe that you don't just get to say "the cloud" and we fucking know what you're talking about.  Does it mean cloud saves?  Cloud storage?  Cloud computation, as some XBone games are touting already even though that kind of requires internet which was something of a problem as we have discussed?  Will you be able to have some sort of cross-compatibility with Windows 8 thanks to "THE CLOUD"?  Any of this is something you could mention instead of just saying "THE CLOUD" as a thing of reverence.  Regardless, it'll be interesting to see just how many Achievements you can add to your indie game and how updating it can or cannot change that, since that's something that has been played around with quite a lot by actual developers (in terms of adding DLC which adds Achievements/Trophies to the overall list).  Actually, it'll just be interesting to see how it handles updates in general, considering some of Microsoft's difficulties with that.

Meanwhile, on the Nintendo side of the world, Nintendo has made a strange move in telling Japanese Indies to shove it.  Or, more succinctly that they're just not accepting Japanese applications for development on the Wii U, despite Nintendo's moves to make the device friendly to Indies of all types.  It's especially weird that they're not taking applications from Japan of all places, considering that's where they're based, but there are some reasons at play here that do sort of make it a little more understandable.  I don't know a lot about the Japanese Indie Scene, but I have to imagine that a good portion of it is likely Visual Novel-based, since that's really big in Japan, and I have to also imagine that a good portion of -that- is...well...not what Nintendo is looking for, I'll say.  I mean, maybe I'm wrong on that, and it's definitely possible that I -am-, and that the Japanese Indie Scene is just rife with platformers that blow Nintendo's own out of the water or something, but I'm just saying that that's possible.  Still, it's just a weird move, especially amidst all the other drama surrounding Indies.

So yeah, it's just kind of amusing to see all this going on and Sony just kind standing off to the side with the bulk of Indie Developers just looking on going "Okay".  I'm not sure what all moves they actually made in wooing the scene as heavily as they did, but it paid off with dividends and it's continuing to do so.  If nothing else, this is all at least a good exercise in realizing the importance of goodwill.  Sony's gained it massively, Microsoft pissed all theirs away and Nintendo is somewhere comfortably in the middle.  Who knows how this'll all play out when plans are actually outlined and put in place, but I wouldn't expect something of a large-scale event occurring.  It takes a lot of work to shift developers away from something, but most of the time it takes something negative to something else, so unless Sony screws the pooch at some point, they might just be around for a while.  Still, with a little competence, a little humility and a little courting, Microsoft could endear themselves back eventually.  I just don't see that happening, though.

well, something negative or truckloads of money, but

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

Enjoy Twenty-Five Minutes of Murdered: Soul Suspect

It's quite an interesting little game.  I'd talk about it but a 25 minute time investment seems like enough of your time for one night.  Though perhaps another night I'll edit in my thoughts and point you back here so we can hash out some of my minor complaints about it thus far, as well as the numerous little cool things the trailer has to offer.  There are quite a few instances of both things, of course.

Terraria on Vita Can't Come Fast Enough

Today, I finally got to wrap my hands around a 360 controller as Minecraft for the mentioned system was loaded up and, indeed, I actually played it, which is something that, before today, I had not done.  Being a creative mode game that was already loaded up, I did the only thing that you do in Creative - I built.  At first, I was frozen with the possibilities; after all, this is a game where literally everything that is grand and wondrous has been made, basically, and anything you can do will hardly pale in comparison.  Yet, we try anyway because the thrill is there no matter what, and eventually I settled on making what everyone more or less ends up making first.

I made a house. 

Rather, I constructed a house.  The semantics, I'm glad to say, are more about the amount of pride used rather than the logistics of it.  I didn't just throw up four walls and smash a door in.  No, I laid down a framework of pillars and built walls in between.  I carved out beneath them and laid down a stone foundation surrounding those walls.  I slammed wooden floors in place.  I created a floor rug with colored wool.  And then I threw down stairs for a second floor and basement both.  I furnished the place.  Without so much as a floor plan, without so much as a preconceived notion of just what this thing was going to look like, I had already put together something quite nice, especially for a first effort.

And then I worked on the second floor.  I extended it out a single block around the edge of the first floor and hopped down, adding supports at the four corners, using fence posts that dropped down to a single wooden block.  Then those wooden blocks were supplemented with stairs that served as a sort of 'trim' to add depth to the facade as they covered the entire bottom layer of the outside of the house.  A set of wooden logs surrounded the front doors to create a 'frame' while also adding depth.  Then, building up the new walls of the new floor, I separated it into the 'landing' from the stairs and a nice bedroom within which I used half-slabs to create nice varieties in height, building up to a focal point where the beds went.  It was about this time that my 360 time was cut short and while I was nowhere near complete, I still held something of satisfaction.

I'm not done, however.  I cannot physically finish that house now, nor can I begin the project anew here, being that I don't own a copy of the game, nor the means with which I can actually play it.  I have an urge to create, to construct, yet no outlet with which to do so other than LittleBigPlanet which I can't get back into at the moment because Soul Sacrifice drops Tuesday and I'm going to play that thing.  It's not quite the same either.  Nor is my other outlet, Terraria, but it will be something different enough, new enough, that I should be able to play with it whenever it comes out.  That's the rub, however, the 'whenever' is not Tuesday, nor next Tuesday, nor the Tuesday following.  And, essentially, I need it now, not then.  My urge to construct will have to take a backseat to my urge to destroy, to cast spells, to fell monsters and that's something that I'm generally fine with.

Still, I really want to play Terraria.  I want to build a house.  I want to find a snow-covered area and build an igloo.  Then I want to build a -riduclous- igloo.  It will please me.  Especially since the game is coming out during the summer and it'll be nice to think cool thoughts.  As in thoughts involving cool and/or cold things.  Not things that are awesome and neat.  Well..that too, but you get my point.

please, Mojang, let 4J port Minecraft to the friggin' Vita, I will love you forever with 20 of my US dollars