Back IV more

You may remember when Raiden IV was hot shit around here, two years ago. I guess that DLC I finally bought a few weeks ago reminded MOSS that there are still fans of the game waiting around for a super play DVD, and they decided to do something about it. They're enlisting Nakano's DVD (Bluuuuuu~raaaaaay!!!!!!11hnnnnnnnng) making skillz this time, and partnered up with his company, Nakano Promotion, to release a super play disc today, June 30th. The disc retails for ¥3,900.

2P: Other than the official shop, the only other online retailer I found that has this for sale (it's out of stock at the moment) is Game Shop 1983. This seems to be rather low profile, so chances for importing are a little slim.

Assaulting the senses

Mamoru Oshii has reached that point in his career where it feels like he's finally run out of things to say with his films, and has therefore resorted to making sci-fi nature specials. Avalon 2, AKA Assault Girls is the latest in his series. The game.. err movie addresses the short comings of the original, which leads to all new problems. Where Avalon took place mostly in the real world, with only a handful of scenes inside the game, Assault Girls takes place entirely on the Desert 22 level of the underground 'Avalon' virtual reality game, that the people of Oshii's future world use to escape their mundane daily lives. The game is very similar in structure to a real world MMO, where powerful monsters roam the land, and players use their earned points from killing them to purchase and upgrade their gear to defeat more powerful foes, all to earn more points and gain access to new areas. At the time the concept may have been innovative, but today it's just Monster Hunter* The Movie. That's about as interesting as it sounds, which is probably why the entire thing only runs for a little over one hour. Featuring a smattering of dialog, a handful of special effect scenes, and mainly composed of long still shots of an eerie landscape, the movie is essentially a National Geographic special on an alien world.

Assault Girls does look quite fantastic. The landscape is beautiful yet quite alien to behold. Made up of the black sand and ash remnants of past volcanic activity, its layout and geographical location, in the almost-tropical south of Japan, of the site lend themselves to impressive vistas of windswept, black hills of rock and sand, under a sky that can turn from blue to as gray as the ground during the course of the day, all of which Ohii and his crew capture masterfully. In a post-300 world, it's impressive to see that the alien world on film is actually part of ours, and not a green-screened sound stage. When I mentioned that Oshii is now making nature specials, I wasn't complaining at all, he's quite skilled at it. To counter balance this seemingly lifeless world, Oshii usually likes to include little touches of wildlife to the visual story. Whether it be flocks of birds, livestock or insects. The image animal for Assault Girls is a snail. It actually plays a more central role than most previous animal characters from past Oshii works. Found on a rock after a battle, it is moved to safety by one of the characters where it is killed by another for a bit of comic relief. The characters themselves are very interesting visually. Three of the four human characters are women, which always helps keep a guy's interest, especially when they're young, attractive, dolled up in leather and carry big guns. They all give off a very Samus Aran of Metroid fame, vibe, or Kelly from GunValkyrie if you need a more obscure reference. Two share this design, while the third is more mystical and ethereal in her presence, sporting a derby hat, a black leather and lace get up and having the ability to grow black wings and fully transform into a raven. To establish her aloofness, she first appears dancing upon her arrival in the stage in a scene that is meticulously captured by Oshii's lens. They're all essentially super model super heroines, like most player avatars found in video games. There's a dude in there as well, and he's essentially a bum, wearing rags and a dirty baseball cap, for a bit of contrast. The character designs may be pretty clichéd from a game point of view, but seeing them on a movie screen instead of a game screen provides just enough wow factor to make them interesting. Additionally, the enemies are giant sand worms that live under the surface of Desert 22. Nothing we haven't seen before in Final Fantasy/Panzer Dragoon/Lost Planet 2.* The landscape may be real, but Japan hasn't bred actual giant sand worms yet, so those guys need to be CG. Since the only point of interaction they and the characters have is the exchange of gunfire, it works pretty well, and all the CG special effects look quite convincing. A far cry from the sepia toned game world scenes from Avalon. The game must have received a pretty big patch in the nine years since.

While visually the movie is a spectacle, the story telling side falls quite flat, unfortunately. Discounting the one character who is totally mute (the Raven-girl, Lucifer, played by Rinko Kikuchi), and the Game Master AI which isn't there to forward the story, Assault Girls only has three characters with dialog. Maybe it's for the better, since the language the writer decided to use was English, despite the cast being entirely Japanese actors. Similarly, Avalon also utilized a foreign language, Polish, but it also used native Polish actors, this being the critical difference. The state of English proficiency in Japan is pretty sad, despite years of schooling, and a plethora of secondary language schools and proficiency tests, and this movie demonstrates those shortcomings painfully clearly. This Japanese release features Japanese subtitles for the English dialog, but I wish it had an English track as well, since it's impossible to understand what the actors are trying to say during some scenes where fast delivery or high tone is needed, such as shouting commands on a battlefield. The radio static effect on the voice doesn't help any. The limited edition I picked up includes the script as one of the extras, which is a big help. I encourage reading along with the action. I'm very curious what the Western versions will opt for, subtitles or a complete overdub? It could be very easy, since the characters are wearing masks half the time, so the audience can't see their mouth movements to begin with. In a bit of a cop out, for the one critical scene where lines needed to be delivered dramatically, and with feeling, the cast switched to Japanese, against the wishes of the Game Master AI, citing a prohibition on "local language." Needless to say, he conceded to the request, just this once, for the sanity of the cast, crew, and the audience. This part does not feature subtitles, making this movie 80% English audio on the technical details checklist. The scene in question was actually the only real story point, making it the conflict, climax, and resolution in one shot. In the meta story of the world where 'Avalon' exists, the game is seen as a detriment to society and has been outlawed. The only way to play is by visiting illegal, underground locales. This makes group play dangerous, as the party makes for a larger target than the individual, and in fact the outlawed game access locales are called "parties." The characters find themselves in an area of the game that is extremely difficult to complete solo, and are actually encouraged to form a party to defeat the boss. I'm not much of a MMORPG player, so maybe this doesn't strike me as high drama. I wonder if Oshii was making a statement about the psyche of gamers, or if this was just an excuse for dressing up girls in leather and filming them shooting guns in a desert. Once a director gets to a certain age, it becomes necessary to examine his decisions within such a context, sadly. And Oshii is not a young guy anymore.

At the end of the day, the movie is all style and very little substance, as per cliché. The landscape shots, the montages, the music, and visual presentation are all beautiful, but there is only the thinnest of plots underneath all that. I find myself wondering if this was a shortcoming of the creators, or was the message so lofty that it sailed over my head? Was I supposed to draw my own meaning from the sunsets and closeups of the characters starring off into the endless desert while wind tossed their hair and clothes? Were they actually searching for a meaning to their empty lives they left behind and came to 'Avalon' to escape instead of giant sand worms? Or maybe I was supposed to simply apply whatever meaning I wanted to the scenes? No point other than what I wanted it to be? To make up my own damn mind? Was Assault Girls an interactive exercise, where the viewer/player actually made the story himself, instead of being spoon fed what the writer wanted him to feel? Was this a heady form of the art of story telling, or was it not art at all? Perhaps I should ask the advice of an expert.

OK, time for a technical review. What you see in the picture is the Collector's Edition Blu-ray package. The movie is also available on DVD, but I'll be damned if I buy a DVD ever again. Being the latest high tech, it commands a premium price, even on top of the limited edition price gouging. As I mentioned before, the movie itself is quite short, making the dollar-per-minute ratio pretty imbalanced. After the credits rolled, I actually started to feel a little ripped off. All totalled, including the trailers and features on the main disc, the running time was under 1 hour, 30 minutes. I decided to pop the second disc in, to at least watch the making-of documentary. Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, the making-of feature (which comes on a DVD, grrr) is longer than the main feature. It is very comprehensive, covering everything from pre-production planning, to location shooting, to special effect shots and audio post production. Curiously it was shot very similarly to the main feature, which makes me think that whoever was handling the camera had learned from the master well. I first learned of this movie from the Assault Girl 2 short included on the Kill omnibus collection. After a bit of research (but after making my initial post) I learned that there was in fact an Assault Girl 1, and it was sadly available on another compilation, which I had no interest in buying. Something to do with the stories of women. Booo~ring. I was extremely happy to find out that both, Assault Girl 1 + 2 shorts are included on the second disc of the Collector's Edition. Assault Girl 1 was actually almost a direct prequel to the main Assault Girls feature, and it looked like it showed the arrival of The Colonel (Hinako Saeki), one of the principal characters from the main story, in the world of Desert 22. Sort of important, I would think. It was disappointing to find out, however, that all the special effects for the mecha, Temjin, and space ship were created for this short, and then reused wholesale in the main movie. It did also have something that was completely omitted, which I'm quite thankful for. That sort of irony I don't need in my sci-fi, thank you. After the let down of the main movie, I feel that the whole package is definitely worth it thanks to the inclusion of the two shorts, making the Collectors Edition an Assault Girl box set.

*Lost Planet 2 would in fact be a more appropriate thematic reference instead of Monster Hunter, but Monster Hunter is more technically similar. Think "Monster Hunter with guns."

A new challenger has entered the ring

Well this was out of left field. Buffalo, the maker of low quality, overpriced, sometimes officially licensed, but generally still crap peripherals has decided to enter the joystick business. They're starting out with a PC compatible HID device using a USB interface. This will likely make it PS3 compatible as well, and the stick even features a "PS" button. I might go for one of these if it's cheap enough and is also easily mod-able. I'm looking for a Japanese low end stick as a backup to my HRAP 3 SA. Sorry MadCatz, maybe if you had style and didn't plaster your stuff with shitty licensed art.

IF Musou

Some actual stuff is beginning to trickle in. The people at Aksys Games are out to prove to everyone that they're crazy, and have decided to release Cave's Deathsmiles into the wilderness of Walmart. I'm not looking to subsidize another company's march towards bankruptcy, so I'll be passing on this one. I was all gung-ho for picking up Ninety-Nine Nights II when it hits this week in America, and the import version a month later, but after giving the downloadable demo a try over the weekend, I'm kind of sucked. The game looks fantastic, in still shots. There are tons of enemies and characters on screen , and shit's exploding and crumbling all over the place, which takes quite a toll on the old 360 hardware. The game barely gets up to 30 frames-per-second when the action starts. There is also some sort of haze filter thing over everything making it kind of hard to tell what the hell is going on in there. The music didn't impress me much either. Needs more metal. I'm still interested, but I might just grab one version instead of both. I just hope Konami doesn't make my mind up for me with region locks. (For reference, the original US N3 was not region locked. It was also self-published by Microsoft.) Then comes another half-assed HD RPG from Idea Factory/Nippon Ichi/and a couple more third string devs. If these guys have to gang up together to make HD games, that's fine, I just wish they made them more interesting. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy to slap some middling crap on a disc, release it with no marketing, and then complain that making HD games is hard when it sells 5,000 copies in its first week. I was going to pick this up just to show my support, but after Cross Edge and Agarest Senki I'm a little gunshy of anything with Idea Factory's name on the box.

Japan is a little worse off, but they get one title that at least is guaranteed to be of top quality. BlazBlue Continuum Shift hits with all its varied wares. The basic game across both HD platforms, Limited Editions with figurines and artbooks and stuff, special edition joysticks, and of course, those pre-order bonus cards. I've actually become less and less interested in this game as time passed. I picked up the first one because it was the first fighter for the HD platforms. It was pretty much Guilty Gear HD. I've never cared much for Guilty Gear to begin with, and it's a distant third behind Capcom and SNK's fighters. With Super Street Fighter IV, and KOF XIII on the horizon, I'm not exactly short of quality fighting games. On top of which, this game looks like it adds less to the formula than even SSFIV did. I might pick it up eventually for cheap, but I'm not holding my breath. Other than that, Japan also gets a bunch of Tecmo Koei's Musou games re-released as budget editions. This is notable because these games sell for stupid high prices upon launch, so getting them for cheap is quite a feat. It's also mind boggling that people willingly pay those prices for what are very boring, and not well designed games over and over. Ironically, the marked down price is higher than what I paid for my entry into the series, making these editions still rip-offs. Also, it looks like only the Sony versions are being discounted, so PS2 and PSP only. So not worth it.

Dungeon crawl

Holy crap, an actual update! Sort of related to my tag hunting from the last time. Impress Watch has been pretty good about keeping their tags relevant, in recent months adding tags for downloadable services, and the iPhone. Yesterday I noticed that they also have a new "Android" tag. The story was about a new device from KDDI for its au mobile service, which also promised a new digital delivery service along with the device. A shadow Android Marketplace of sorts. Since au is a popular service with a lot of games, the thought of an exclusive service wasn't my idea of fun. To date, Android has proved itself as an open, international platform. "Jeux sans frontiers," if you want to be a douche about it. The games they featured looked pretty impressive too, although after a little research it turned out to be just licensed G-Mode shit.

This news prompted me to take a little trip through the Android Market, to see if there was any new software that looked interesting. There I came upon a interesting looking homebrew RPG game. It looked to be simple 3D with 2D sprites for characters and enemies, and was also the showcase for a custom game engine. I wondered why would someone make a 3D app for a device that can't handle 3D. But since they did, that means it has to, right? I downloaded a trail version, and was surprised to find it ran like crap on my phone. For the longest time I thought the only Android headset in Japan was NTT DoCoMo's HT-03A, which is the same model that I own. It made me feel better about still schlepping around with Android 1.6. After checking the developers FAQ, it looks like there are plenty more powerful alternatives to the lowly HTC Magic. NTT themselves have Sony Ericsson's Xperia, as I mentioned earlier, KDDI is about to launch the Sharp IS01 "smart book," a cross between a netbook and a phone, and J-iPhone carrier Softbank is in the game with HTC's own Desire, a follow up the the mighty Nexus One. Welp, time for an upgrade.

The only other thing I downloaded was a free pole jumping thingie from Genki of all people. It sucks pretty hard, can only be played in landscape mode, despite having a perfectly square game screen, and has annoyingly loud music. Good price for it.

This ain't even funny

Shit is so slow that I had to scrape the bottom just for this crap. A lot of Japanese game websites have little icons they tag stories with, which are the first thing I look at when quickly browsing. In the past they used to be system names, like "PS2," "DC," "GBA," etc. In the current market, they crated a "Multi" tag, but its use, and the use of system tags in general has been greatly neglected in general. Most stories just get tagged with the generic "News" tag anyway. Just for extra fun, and something to do, I counted the individual console system tags. I present my findings at the conclusion of this post. Get your drink ready.

First, and most recently, we get a bunch of Third Birthday(, The) media and info. A cellphone game, which was moved to the PSP because the original target platform wasn't powerful enough to realize the concept. Hmm, underpowered hardware you say? English summary available here.

The biggest news of the week, by far, was the release of Love Plus + for the DS. At the launch event the audience was presented with the three girls' game models projected onto a wall sized screen who proceeded to act out some scene. The 3D models were plain and similarly styled to their DS counterparts, but were powered by much more capable hardware for the presentation. Can you hear my teeth grinding as I type this?

Sega gave it their best with their Sega Private Show 2010, which featured their latest upcoming arcade hardware and software. Mostly revisions to card-based, touch-screen games and the newest Virtua Fighter 5 version. Also, prize catchers and other non-game junk.

If the arcade scene wasn't dead enough, Hori decided to start selling Taito's Viewlix cabs directly to consumers through their webstore. $5,000 for the cabinet, plus $5,000 for the KOF XIII Type X kit. Serious business.

Speaking of which, The King Of Fighters XIII kit drops on July 14th.

I don't care for Capcom's upcoming Last Ranker RPG-like thing. Which is ironic since the battle system looks very similar to one I've had in my head for many years now. Still, nothing about this game interests me in the slightest, not the least of which is the platform of choice, the 4-player adhocky Playstation Portable. The art is nice, that I'll give it.

Speaking of art, Enterbrain's Amagami has some of my favorite character art of any gal-get game, and maybe any game period. Apparently they've released five audio drama CD's to date, because they've just released the sixth one today. I only click on the stories to see more of the the fantastic art.

If you didn't notice yet, I've been pointing out the platforms the games I mentioned run on, in order to emphasize that there are almost no console games worth a damn at the moment. This actually ties into my tag findings. After scanning the page exclusively for "PS3," "360" and "Wii," I came up with a pitiful handful of games. The "best" example is Sanyo and Irem's Pachinko Paradise Slot bullshit thing. If you need some software to demonstrate the versatility of your Playstation 3 hardware, get your ¥6,090 ready later this year.

Moondiver is the second half of my results. A downloadable 4-player ("party") action game. The tag says "360," but I wouldn't be surprised if this was "multiplat" across both XLA and PSN, which don't even have their own tags. Only Impress Watch makes an effort to catalog downloadables as separate entities.

To be honest, most games are hidden behind ambiguous tags like "Game" or "News," but that's part of the problem. During the previous generation, only Xbox games would be treated in this manner, but lately it seems all console games are included in this ghetto. Out of a page of maybe 70 headlines, there were only three "360's," and four "PS3's," and one of the games was MLB 2K11 which had both tags attached, and isn't even domestic. There was also a single "Wii" game and even a "PS2" for some damn reason. Curiously, one can find proper tags only when the story deals with foreign games. There you have it, scientific proof that the Japanese game industry is dying. Damn you Inafune! *shakes fist*

Hard choice

After four years, I finally caved, and bought Microsoft's overpriced, proprietary Xbox 360 hard drive. I'm just glad that for $120 they included a god damned transfer cable. Ironically, the game that finally pushed me to do it was Warriors Orochi 2. Up to now I never had any problem installing two games to my 20 GB HDD. For some fucking reason, a PS2 port takes up 6.8 GB. After formatting and the system partition has been created a 20 GB drive has 12 GB of storage left. 12 - 6.8 = 5.2, which is dangerously close to the size of Super Street Fighter IV. After erasing EVERYTHING else from my drive, I have 300 MB's after installing the two games. I even had to erase NeoGeo Battle Coliseum. That was the last straw, frankly. And while we're at it, why is that fucking game 800 MB's?

Itagaki: (cries)

This came in today. It was Play-Asia's weekly deal last week. I figured $9 was a decent price for this mess, even if it's unplayable garbage. I never played any of these games, except for the original Sangoku Musou, the one-on-one fighting game for Playstation. (That one wasn't bad.) If after all these years, and revisions, Omega Force is still putting these things out, one has to wonder if they're doing something right. I've got to admit, I'm very curious to see what that may be. I've been prevented from giving these games a try before by regional locks, and stupid high asking prices. Given the opportunity, I went for it.

Edit: Nope, still don't get it.

Story driven

Picked this up last week. I've been playing through Super Robot Wars/Taisen Original Generation 1 for the last few weeks, and it's been pretty fun. I actually always wanted to pick this version up instead, but since they're very story linked, I went for the original OG game. I figure I'd better pick this one up before they fall off the internet. Haven't started it yet, and I won't until I finish 1. Thanks to idiotic packaging, it now takes up 50% less space on my shelf.

Mildly amusing

Figures, the one thing I had my eye on this week was delayed a month. This prompted me to check up on available release dates and update my calendar. Wouldn't you know it, a crap load of stuff comes out in Japan this week, but I don't particularly care for any of it. Not enough to buy it, at least.

The only original offering is Gust's Atelier Totori, sequel to last years Atelier Rorona. I never played any of these games, since they've been pretty inaccessible so far. We still haven't gotten Rorona in the States, for example. Still, it's nice to see franchises take root on the HD systems, so I'd like to support them. Eventually.

Then we get a a bunch of ports and updates. Chaos;Head Noah is getting a PSP port. The first one was sort of a big deal on 360, I don't know if this sequel had the same impact. The King Of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match gets refreshed with a Tougeki Version. All totaled, I think I have four versions of KOF 2002, and already have the Unlimited Match on PS2. The game was never good enough to buy multiple times, it just sort of happened that way. I just hope that the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade version will be based off of this update. Konami's award-winning Love Plus is also getting a refresh. Love Plus + doesn't have any new girls, but it does have a load of new events and features. These games are usually amusing distractions, but when they start incorporating real-time events tied to real geographic locales, it starts to get creepy. You physically have to pay money and spend time travelling to a locale with your virtual girlfriend. Err... Speaking of creepy, SEGA's Project Diva game-thing is getting a budget rerelease ahead of the upcoming sequel. This is actually interesting since there exists a PS3 application, that when linked with the PSP version of the game, translates the events from the PSP to the PS3, utilizing the updated specs. Essentially a PS3 version that uses the PSP program code. A neat trick.

Coming up next week, E3 2010 Game Of the Show, Tak Fuji's Ninety Nine Nights II. EXTREME!

Episode 3

As suspected, E3 was boring as hell. Everyone decided that this was actually a good idea all along, or that things will be different this time around.

Nintendo showed off Zelda Wii, which is so early it's more of a proof of concept at this point, than an actual game. I thought that concept was already proven back in 2006?

Takahashi Meijin is a cool guy. It's nice to see him still doing this video game thing after all these years. Hudson had a mixed bag of stuff at the show, and none of it was very impressive. This Shadow Walker (Shadow Tower? whatever) thing was mildly amusing, only because it's an actual game, and not a minigame collection.

If you want to know what went down at E3, just ask Mask. (Splatterhouse looks like it will suck, big time, though. Be warned.)

That was all the time we have on E3. Now we dance.

War destroyer

That's more like it. Sangokushi Taisen is a card based arcade game by Sega. It's sort of their Lord Of Vermilion. We've been over why card-based games are interesting before, and the latest revision, Sangokushi Taisen 3 War Begins doesn't disappoint. Selvaria Bles romances the three kingdoms. I demand she be given her own spin-off series. Make it a thrid-person shooter if you have to.

Let's go hyper

The E3 opening ceremonies are over, and as I suspected, no one has anything interesting to show. The only thing worth posting isn't even good news. I didn't like Marvel VS Capcom 2, so I sure don't give a damn about 3. The only interesting thing of note is that even though the game is switching from 4:3 2D to 16:9 3D, the returning cast will retain their old movesets. This sort of makes me consider this game more, since I'll be ale to pick up and play it at least, instead of fumbling around with some convoluted control scheme. Provided the six-button layout returns. Since the game retains the 3-on-3 style of its predecessor, I'm going to need a third guy for my team. Captain America is my favorite from the MSH games, Ryu is a poor man's replacement fro Ken, maybe I can get the hang of Dante, provided his moves aren't all charge commands. The 3D graphics look pretty ass, though.

Edit: Shit!

Entertainment and devices division

OK, now this is totally news. Japan apparently has something called the Japan Romance Awards. I have no idea about what that is about, or what the hell that mascot is supposed to be, therefore I'm not sure if I should be taking this seriously. Just to be on the safe side, I won't. The reason I'm mentioning this is because Konami's Love Plus won the Entertainment category this year (assuming this is an annual thing). The game's producer, Akari Uchida, was on hand to receive the honor and take the class photo (he's the bald one). In other categories, Tokyo Tower won for most romantic locale. Yeah.

Chaos;Head indeed

Here's some post worthy news. When you buy the upcoming Chaos;Head Noah PSP port from select nerdy retailers, you can get this. I'm rolling my eyes as I type this.

This changes nothing

I got nothing for this week. E3 is starting, so maybe some news will come out of there, but as far as game releases go, it's a blank slate. Arc Rise Fantasia is the only thing of note for next week. Back to watching Final Fantasy XIII play itself.

Itagaki's 3rd

Hallelujah, finally, some goddamned news to post. Not surprising, it comes courtesy of Tomunobu Itagaki. For those that weren't keeping score on the guy, he sexually harassed some broad, quit Tecmo, sued them, and started up Valhalla Game Studio with former Team Ninja and TTI guys. Now he's back and partnering up with THQ to bring us a post apocalyptic third-person shooter on the PS360. Everything I just typed out would be considered epic fail for any lesser man, but only Itagaki can put those things on his resume and make himself look good. After watching that trailer, I'm eagerly anticipating this game.

Can't call it a comeback

Oh man, where do I even begin with this one. The short version is that this is not the knight in shining armor that will save the PS3 and Japan. This game is an embarrassment to the gamers, and its makers. This can't even be considered half-finished and rushed out the door to meet a deadline. With the amount of bare-bones technical content it's closer to a third finished. The graphics, audio and story may be competent, but after the five years of development, Square Enix forgot to make a game out of Final Fantasy XIII.

The final battle system has been watered down from the one found in the demo. The only interesting, though poorly implemented, "knock-up" mechanic has been replaced with a "Stagger" system. Similarly to the demo version, once an enemy receives enough damage they glow yellow, but now this condition only causes them to receive more damage from the players' subsequent attacks. This is done to compensate for the lack of a proper growth system and character levels. No more EXPerience points, VITality, LUCk, etc. The only stats left are Hit Points, STRength, and MAGic. This makes the core game extremely simple, so the developers decided to overpower the major enemies, forcing the player to utilize the Stagger mechanic as the only way to win. Keeping with 3D FF tradition, the battles are spastic and confusing, with sudden cuts and fast camera pans. The developers decided to add an "Auto Battle" command to make things more manageable. Instead of having to select commands from a list while robotic dogs chew on your face, you can now hit a single button and let the computer select Attack-Attack-Attack for you. Random enemy encounters have, therefore, been reduced to the player hitting the X button over and over again, eliminating the need to even hit Up or Down on the d-pad occasionally or navigating through sub-menus. Again, a band aid placed over a fundamental design flaw. The most complicated thing the player will be asked to do is hit L1 to open a menu, press up or down, to select a pre-programmed character behavior set, and hit the X button to accept. That's three or four consecutive button presses, provided the player was enterprising enough to set up their own set instead of relying on the ones that are automatically added by the system. All the while you'll find robotic dogs are chewing on your face. As someone currently playing through Final Fantasy V, I really have to ask, what happened to wait-time during sub-menu navigation? The PS3 isn't capable of halting the on-screen action like the Super Nintendo was or something? It's all quite bizarre to behold.

The music is still good. The graphics look unchanged from the demo. The maps are all straight corridors, and the whole thing is still an amusement park ride simulator. Square Enix finally succeeded in incorporating RPG elements into a movie. Also keeping with Final Fantasy tradition, no one will call out this game over any of these flaws in any meaningful way, until at least five years from now. (When Final Fantasy Versus XIII is released.) At this point I'll have to assume that the game was put together in the eight months between the demo's release and the final game. I find it hard to believe that the company that put a Final Fantasy logo on an artificial intelligence tool-kit made these backwards decisions on purpose, especially with a main series entry, their flagship product.

You may notice the $59.99 price tag in that picture. That is certainly not the price I paid for this. I missed my chance to pick this up for $30 at K-Mart, but I guess the kid I bought it off of on eBay didn't. I'd like to think that after shipping and/or gas, he didn't make any money off of my $35 winning bid. If $60 is the full asking price, and the product is only 1/3 complete, $20 is a fair price to pay. The US hasn't caught on to this yet, but Japan quickly realized it when the game could be had for ¥980 a few weeks after release. Currently, the market price seems to be ¥500. That's the score then, Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3 is ¥500 out of ¥9800.

Dead society

I had hoped that doing that weekly wrap-up post last time would light a fire under my ass to try to avoid doing another one. Nope, didn't work. Welcome to episode two of I'm-too-fucking-lazy-to-update-this-space-properly.

Quantum Theory looked conceptually brilliant but technically incompetent last year when it was announced. Koei must have felt the same, because it was delayed indefinitely when they merged with Tecmo. In order to keep the game in front of people until they eventually release the damn thing, TKG is re-reminding the usual suspects about what it is that they're trying to make. It still looks great, especially the character designs for the protagonists. I always liked the big, burly, evil-looking motherfucker, and the lithe, ethereal beauty dynamic. Reminds me of the metal I like listening to. As long as that's present, I remain interested in the game.

Hospital The Six Doctors AKA Trauma Team is also one of those great looking games, that unfortunately doesn't have enough "game" for me to bother. The character designs are fantastic, and the premise of a medical drama is an unique story telling angle for a video game. Too bad it's all an attractive shell for a goddamned mini-game collection. My fear of trying new things will keep me from giving this one a try for a very long time. Maybe if I watch all the promotional stuff on their website I'll change my mind.

Speaking of screengrabs of an official website, Sting released the codes needed to unlock all the content on the official Blaze Union site. Not sure how I missed this one. Would have made an actual post about it. Maybe the fact I'm still waiting for Play-Asia to ship my fucking copy has something to do with it.

Otomedius was a silly arcade concept. It was ported to the 360 years ago, and it was mediocre. For some reason someone decided it was a good idea to make a sequel. Likely the guy who was in charge of the DLC. These games are nothing more than micro-transaction platforms for the companies making them these days. I'd rather not subsidize Konami's health club business with my MSP, but damn it if this isn't worth 800 of 'em. Mine Yoshizaki doesn't disappoint with Kokoro Belmont in Otomedius Excellent.

Compile Heart is all about disappointment though. Albeit the art in Agarest Senki was quite good as well. I'd much rather plunk down the cash on a weak shooting game that will only ask me to play it for a few minutes, than a dull RPG that requires hours of time investment. The battle shot from Agarest Senki 2 looks pretty good, I've got to admit, but I'm not falling for that one again.

Everyone else is too busy announcing that they'll be announcing something new at E3 next week. Via Twitter. Fuck the internet.

F-words

The original Type X game, Chaos Breaker, is being picked up, dusted off, and ported to PSN, under the name Dark Awake. Dark Awake was the game's original name (Ctrl+F, "Dark Awake" /OG internets represent!) when it was under development at craptacular Korean bootlegger, Eolith. The game was distributed in arcades by Taito, where it had it's name changed to Chaos Breaker. Now it's back under the original moniker. The company doing the publishing is some no-name, also most likely Korean. I smell this name change is a loophole to avoid paying Taito license fees. I remember the game being mentioned when Taito was pushing the Type X, but nothing since. I guess it must be at least technically competent to get the Taito label and backing. Will check it out. Out of the fighting games left behind in the arcade wastelands, there are much more interesting titles I'd like to see given new life, however. Rumble Fish 2 comes immediately to mind, also the (unreleased?) Rival Schools-alike, Kenju. Or Jingi Storm, for the lulz.

Pigs in space

NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, Xenoblade, Metal Gear Big Boss Peace Walker, Mega Man Zero Collection. A downloadable, a Wii game, a PSP original and a GBA-to-DS port collection. THIS is what the video game industry has been reduced to. I'm getting NBC just because. I'm going to wait on a Xenoblade localization, since it's a sure thing at this point. Metal Gear on the PSP can fuck off. And it can take the Mega Man Zero games with it. Looking at my calendar, I have plenty of time to finish up Final Fantasy V and Super Robot Wars OG (GBA), before Arc Rise Fantasia hits. FFV is fast becoming a favorite Final Fantasy game for me, and has a decent shot at taking the reigning champ down by the time it's over. SRW is such anime pap, but it's pretty damn fun watching robots blow each other up in space. I actually pulled out the Gamecube with GBA Player for it, now I just need some GC component cables, *woof*.

Mad themes

I absolutely _love_ it when I find shit out months or years too late because the people responsible for telling me don't tell me. As mentioned before, I bought the Ninety-Nine Nights OST from this shady website, which I won't mention because they don't deserve the plug. Obviously during registration they ask for an email address so they can send me promotional spam. Sure enough, I received a few of those over the years. Mysteriously they've always made mention of garbage like God Of War or Hitman, but omitted the fact that the likes of Blue Dragon, Street Fighter IV, and MadWorld's original soundtracks are available for purchase from the site as well. I felt the Blue Dragon OST reminded me a lot of Final Fantasy VI, and felt like the true Final Fantasy VII, but it wasn't enough to get me to buy the disc, for $30, but any Nobuo Uematsu is good Nobuo Uematsu, especially for 10-fucking-dollars! Similarly, I was _this_ close to buying the double disc set for Street Fighter IV, just the get the remix themes found on disc two. I got the Super IV LE, so that itch has been scratched, but only because I didn't know about this beforehand. It's also pretty interesting to see MadWorld up there, and while not my cup of tea, it's still a good and unique soundtrack composed of metal tinged, hardcore hip-hop instead of the formless orchestral shit you get from Halo-alikes found throughout that site. And if anyone has doubts as to the quality of the source of these tracks, my N3 mp3's are encoded at a variable bit rate and have katakana ID3 tags

Report from hell

I'm thinking of starting a new thing on here to help with the lack of meaningful content. In addition to the weekly outlook posts on Mondays, I'm considering a weekly wrap-up listing the not-interesting-enough-to-get-their-own-post news items. It will largely depend on how interested I am in cluttering up this space with throw-away PR reposts from mainstream news sites. If I can manage to scrape enough content to pad out a post every week, I'll try to make it a regular fixture. As an aside, I originally planned to put this up yesterday, Friday, so we're already off to a great start.

First, we have a handful of screenshots and a trailer for Virtual On Force. I liked the first VO, didn't care for Oratario Tangram at all, but this one seems interesting. I felt OT was a very boring looking and playing game compared to the original. This one looks a lot more interesting already. Four robots in a stage at the same time takes care of the tedium of dashing back and forth shooting lasers at the other guy, and the colorful imaginative new robot designs (girl with wings, crab legs, transformations, etc.) make up for the drab environments. No release date though, means that hype levels are pretty low at present.

Then we have screenshots and a trailer for Ys VS Sora no Kiseki. As I've mentioned before, my interest in both series has completely evaporated, therefore putting the two of them together in a non-canonical, four player spin-off "fighting game" on the PSP does nothing for me. After watching that trailer, it does look pretty decent, though. Bright colorful graphics, fast action, probably massive fan service for the kids crazy enough to still be Falcom fans. Just in case all that didn't do it for you, Ys VS Sora no Kiseki Alternative Saga will be the playable debut of Sora no Kiseki sequel, Zero no Kiseki's protagonists. Those kids. I can't be bothered to look up their names. If you care, you now them already. The only reason I keep bringing up Falcom on here is because they're old-school, and not dead yet. An impressive achievement in iteself.

Konami is pretty old-school too, and they're still around. Although they're not making games of their own anymore, just publishing other people's crap. Like Ninety-Nine Nights II, or N3-2, which is actually called "Ninety-Nine Nights II" in Japan, and is still a Xbox 360 exclusive. I'd be shocked if this one makes it to 10,000 units sold. There is also a demo on XLA which even if it wasn't locked for Silver members, I probably still wouldn't have downloaded it. I only cared about the first one because it was Microsoft's Great White Hope in Japan. Now that they don't need it, I don't care. I'm pretty sure the girl from the cover of the first one is dead anyway, so she won't feature in this installment, which seems to have a few returning characters. The music might be nice. I might download the OST for $9.99 like I did the first one.

Similarly to Konami, Namoco doesn't make games anymore either. Other than an occasional Tales Of game I don't remember buying anything with their logo on the box since Ridge Racer 7. So it's a nice surprise that they're publishing what looks like the most interesting looking game since Shadow Of the Colossus. Not surprisingly, the two look like they share a lot in common. Majin looks more grounded in reality, though, featuring a playable character that receives help from a large, magical, golem-thing to defeat enemies and overcome obstacles in a low-tech, fantasy setting. I'll tell you this much, I can't remember the last time I played a straight up adventure game in that mold. Alundra maybe? This is by far the most genuinely interesting of the things I'm including in this "rejects" post. I'm only uncertain of the developer's track record, since I've never played a Games Republic game before. Therefore, my interest is two-fold. It feels kind of nice to be anticipating a game release for a change.

At the bottom of the barrel we have Mega Man X3 being ported to cellphones. I hope this, and the just-announced Mega Man Online, featuring the X designs, helps revitalize the X franchise enough so that it can receive a final hurrah via a new-old WiiWare sequel like the vanilla Mega Man series got with Mega Man 9 and 10. I wonder, though, if there is anyone left at Capcom that remembers what made Mega Man great, (hint: it's the levels stupid) after the abortions that were X5, and X6. (Entries in the series beyond this point are non-existent to me.)

This is the best Japan could come up with last week. Not really surprising considering that the thing that got people out of their houses and lined up in the rain outside a store for a pre-order ticket was the Love Plus + DSi LL Limited Edition. Burn in hell Japan.

Illusion hard

Speaking of being late to the party, which decade did this guy come from? I read Japanese game sites every day, and have been for years, and I can't think of a single game that was "left behind." (That isn't a Nintendo published title.) Now I love hyperbole and cynicism as much as the next internet guy, but this seems a little overboard even for me. There is a slew of niche publishers in the market at present, and they've been slitting each other's throats fighting for Idea Factory's scraps for years. The company logo image mentions retro games, which makes me think this guy is trying to do the Gaijinworks/Sunsoft/Telenet thing and bring some obscure ("classic") 8/16-bit stuff to downloadable services or iPhone or something. Like that one before it, this is not the "exciting announcement" we've been looking for. The sad truth is that the Japanese market is NOT the Mecca of gaming it used to be, and is in fact in a steep decline. Even if you form a close relationship with a developer, there is no guarantee they'll ever put out anything interesting in the future. Unless you want to localize Illusion Soft's stuff. This guy better be hyping Metal Max 3. (Or Valhalla Freaks stuff?)

Foot-in-mouth disease

I still feel it's a little too late, but this whole affair is starting off on a nice note. I wasn't interested in Ys Seven before, but I am now. Mission complete. As nice as being right feels, I made that original claim with a sense of dread. Becoming the next Working Designs also means going down in flames, which is never fun, especially if the company becomes beloved in it's time. I always expected these little niche guys to die out sooner or later, and doing things like this seems to hasten that process. It's been nice knowing you, XSeed? I hope I'm wrong about this one.

Fun with phones

And here I was about to whine how there was nothing to post this week either. Gpara saves our asses by giving us something to think about. First, a history lesson. Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai was always a series that bordered on "ecchi" (that's anime nerd for "H"), by featuring bouncing boobs and straight up T&A on occasion. It was a pioneer of that sort of blatant self-promotion back in the 16-bit days. But everyone's doing that these days, so how can one make it stand out among all the shovelware hitting the PSP on a weekly basis? Like so, girls in underwear taking pictures. We're almost there.

The real news here actually is that Cyberfront is keeping the Jaleco brand afloat. The game, Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai IV Portable is actually a port of a 2007 PS2 game, but I didn't know that, so this already accomplished the goal of keeping the series relevant for the kids.