Swords with girls

Wouldn't you know, I actually had some original content to post on here last Saturday, but shit happened and I never got the chance. Luckily, I seem to be ahead of the curve, so I don't think Kotaku got wind of this yet. Over the years I've watched Queen's Blade go from quirky little "battle book" series to multimedia mega franchise. Unfortunately, like most properties, something has been lost in the transition. Queen's Blade is so passé. It's all about Samurai Girls now.

Hyakka Ryoran or Samurai Girls, takes a page from Ikkitousen's book (which itself has also been ripped off by Sengoku Hime since), and reinterprets Japan's Warring States period with anime chicks in varying degrees of fetishy and impractical outfits. The biggest hack job was probably Hattori Hanzo, the bad ass ninja, turned into a gohtic maid with razor bladed skirt... On second though, that's not a half bad design. The star of the "series" is the red-headed, pink-shirt, no-pants wearing Yagyuu Jubei. She carries two swords, so it makes sense, you see. To date, this franchise seems to be made primarily to base figures off of, which is haw I actually learned of this (and Queen's Blade initially). There also seem to be some sort of manga and/or books based off around these characters. This, like QB seems to be an original Hobby Japan property, so chances of this one getting a PSP game from Namco Bandai are pretty good at some point. That reminds, I still need to pick up Spiral Chaos. Where's that The Best reprint, Bamco?

Do over

In an effort to retain their official leadership position of the American publishing market, Ignition Entertainment (a UTV company) delayed the release of Arc Rise Fantasia AFTER it had already been released last week. Some of the shipments got out of the factory and went on sale last week, while the official release date was changed to July 27th. We should be expecting this one promptly tomorrow then, since it has been "in transit" for the past week. Other than Ignition's shenanigans, we can look forward to Aksys' shenanigans as they try to release BlazBlue Continuum Shift. I picked up the first one, played it only until Street Fighter IV hit, and haven't touched it since. It's always been a similar story with Arc System Work's past games. They just don't hold my attention, so maybe I should stop handing over my money. I shall contemplate this issue further. From Japan the most interesting thing I see is Metal Max 3. Neo Geo Shooting' is also kind of interesting, but since I know it's coming to XLA, where it'll be playable using an arcade joystick, I just can't bring myself to care much about the PSP port.

There's also a bunch of other crap that we covered last week, that I don't feel like re-posting. The last thing I need is for "Strike Witches" to become a keyword for this blog in Google's database. But perhaps I've said too much.

For next week I have Castlevania Harmony Of Despair, and Corpse Party's PSP port, subtitled Blood Covered. I've been keeping an eye on Corpse Party for a while now, since it looks really cool. It has a really cute anime art style, and old school 16-bit sprite graphics that resemble a long lost SNES RPG. As the name implies, the story it tells is not as cheerful as it looks. It's basically a J-horror high school drama thingy, which normally would be all kinds of uninteresting, but the presentation makes it noteworthy. This is a port of a doujin game, so it'll need appropriately lowered expectations. I might not get it immediately, but I'll definitely keep my eye on it.

Start the presses

Yeah I didn't update at all throughout the week, bite me. I'll run it down for you and then maybe you'll understand why the "publish post" button never saw any action.

Trinity Zill O'll Zero is a HD game made by Tecmo Koei. It was announced roughly at the same time as Quantum Theory, and was also delayed at the same time following the merger. It also appears to be coming out reasonably close to QT. Why is it then that we know a hell of a lot more about this game than Quantum Theory, thanks to weekly media blowouts like this? Swords-n-sorcery VS guns, PS3 exclusivity VS multiplatform. Koei's internal project VS Tecmo's internal project. I smell a rat.

I was gritting my teeth at the sight of the high res models of the Love Plus girls last time, since I thought they had been created solely for that marketing event, and would be abandoned once Love Plus+ went on sale. Glad to see that wasn't the case. Love Plus Arcade seems like a damn odd idea, but I don't care as long as the art assets are actually pleasant to look at. Also, this franchise needs an art book for fuck's sake.

OK, I should have totally made this a separate post, but I only saw it today. There is a PSP love adventure game coming out at some point called Love Once. That's not important. The important bit is that the developer is called "Maid Meets Cat." I'm not making that up, it's even their URL and shit. That's so much more interesting than whatever the game they're developing will turn out to be, no doubt. Damn shame.

In a shocking display of logical and rational thinking, Examu has partnered up with HD fighting game aficionados, Arc System Works, to port Arcana Heart 3 to the PS3 and 360. I've been burned by Arcana Heart 2 pretty badly, so I'm not holding my breath. Also, I'm not thrilled with this anime girly fighting game boom we seem to be in the midst of. Touki Denshou Angel Eyes on my PSP fulfills the quota for that genre, methinks.

Speaking of shitty fighting games, the last time we talked about FK Digital's Chaos Code was in April '09. For some damn reason the game is only going on location test just this weekend. It's got nice backgrounds, that's about all I can say. I didn't have the patience to let any of the demo movies load on that official website.

Marvel VS Capcom 3 got some new characters and shit. *yawn*

In a bit of a nice surprise, Square Enix elected to re-assemble the original creators of Tactics Ogre, and remake the game for the its 15th anniversary. It's doubly interesting since the game's director, Yasumi Matsuno, went a little bit crazy during Final Fantasy XII's development, and quit the company on likely not-so-amicable terms. I guess it's water under the bridge, but probably involved the condition that he be given freedom to work the game his way, free of interference from top managers. I'd like to think that, at least. In addition, the game itself looks very interesting on its own. It's more of an updated port, that a full on remake, or reboot, that the kids are into these days. It actively tries to imitate the look of the Super Famicom original, using the same character sprites and art, but updates the technology to full 3D with dynamic lighting. I really like the sound of that one. It's only unfortunate that this had to be a remake, and not a wholly original entry into the series.

See, it was all scum at the bottom of the barrel. Except that last one, which is actually too mainstream, every one knows Matsuno these days. It's all the hardcore game nerd's burden.

Earth Quaker!

My favorite animator is Masami Obari. I love his stylized character designs, which at their most extreme, usually turn the human form into something closer to the Eva units from Evangelion. He also likes to translate comic action into real world physics, vis-à-vis Terry Bogard destroying an entire building's rooftop with a single Power Geyser. These traits lend themselves well to working in Japan's robot animation industry, and he has lent his talent to several robot themed television series and video games over the years. Unfortunately, he's been pretty low key for a while now, with his most notable output of late being the Angle Blade series of (porn) OVA's. Well now he's finally been given a chance at the real deal. Masami Obari will produce the next Super Robot Wars anime series, which will be based around the OG storyline and characters. I personally can't wait to see who will be locked into a "knuckle bash" clash with the Altaisen's Revolver Stake during the climactic battle. Don't you dare change Obari!

Undead line

I downloaded the Gundemonium Collection last week, and all I got was three lousy shooting games. I remember hearing the name for years, but never got the chance to check out the games previously. The problem being that Gundemonium was what the cool kids call "doujin" PC software, which is basically Japanese for "hands off foreigner." Only very recently, mostly coinciding with the rise in popularity of PayPal, and the widespread adoption of high speed internets, have Japanese indy devs come around to the idea of selling their games to people who would like to buy them. It's pretty ass backwards when the easiest way for me to play a guy's game was picking up the Wonderswan version of Dicing Knight. Dicing Knight was unfortunately, not as cool as I was led to believe, incidentally by the same people who told me about Gundemonium. At one point I might have been aware that the games were developed by the same guy, but I seem to have forgotten this over the years. I don't regret the $15, because it goes more to support the publisher than the developer anyway, but I should have done my homework. The collection is made up of three games, which are actually only two distinct titles, and one remake/update. Hitogata Happa is a vertical shooter, GundeadliGne is a horizontal shooter, and Gundemonium Recollection is a remixed version of GundeadliGne. I would have only picked GundeadliGne had I known then what I know now, and I wouldn't have been as gung-ho about it, maybe waiting for a sale or something.

One prevalent aspect of this "doujin" stuff is most games tend to be balls hard, and these games are no exception. Hitogata Happa seems completely unplayable, with a slow "ship," fast bullets, and enemies that take way too many hits to die. I didn't really care about that one, so it's no big deal. GundeadliGne was the game I really wanted, and it looks to be pretty decent. It has a ton of attack and defensive options to play with, sensible attack patterns, and a hitbox small enough to fit through them. I like it. Gundemonium Recollection is a remixed version of GundeadliGne, with some of the weapon systems streamlined, and gameplay tweaked. I lasted longer in 'liGne, so I'll be sticking to that. These games are straight PC ports, with no widescreen support, but an option to adjust the display any which way. The music is straight MIDI, which sounds pretty poor, but seems well composed and is catchy, but for some reason skips every few seconds, which gets on my nerves since I use a decent pair of headphones. Also, Hitogata Happa has no "TATE," or horizontal orientation option, which for shooting game fans is a big minus for a vertical shooter. I haven't actually hooked up my HRAP to any of these, but I suspect it would work just dandy, and with the option to remap buttons, they can be played in comfort. All in all these are very much indy games, a mixed bag of good and bad ideas with no quality control. One thing the Japanese indy scene always had right was the pricing, at $6 a pop I don't mind never finishing any of these.

Not long enough

Well, I was looking forward to this week, that was before Arc Rise Fantasia got delayed into next week. I should have see that coming, frankly. Japan isn't any better off. Fate/Extra is a Persona rip-off made by the same people who made the last few Persona games to begin with. Scandalous! Also, Ninety-Nine Nights II. Extreme! That reminds me, I sort of forgot to play that game over the past week. Oops.

Next week America gets the aforementioned ARF (that's an unfortunate acronym), and BlazBlue Continuum Shift. I've actually grown bored of BlazBlue as a whole, so I'm not really interested anymore, especially since this is just the original game with two new characters. While the pickings are slim in the US, Japan gets release-mageddon next Thursday. Eight games, of varied quality, but still a ton compared to any previous week. I'm personally the most interested in Metal Max 3, since it's a new entry in a long dormant RPG series, created by the original developers too boot. I hope one of these "niche publishers" comes through with this one, Pub Of The Year is still up for grabs. Next we have Neo Geo Heroes Ultimate Shooting, which is pretty much KOF Sky Stage with more characters. Sengoku Basara 3 also looks interesting for some reason, probably because it's a real console game. Ys VS Sora no Kiseki is the last game on the list that I'll admit has any merit. The rest is stuff I'll only point out because it fits the niche we've chosen for ourselves.

• Super Dimensional Game Neptune - Looks silly, but Idea Factory, bleh
• Agarest Senki Zero - 360 port, IF again
• Project Diva 2 - turned into sort of a big deal for SEGA
• Strike Witches - a shooter so terrible even I won't touch it

Celebrate with booze

Finally, one of them understands.

Android Watch

One more, and I'm out. This is sort of relevant, since I'm both an Android user, and a fan of Japanese games. Impress Watch has put together an interview with Japan's Android Group director, who also happens to work for shooting game specialist, Cave. (Cave subsidize their incomprehensible business model by developing tons of cellphone games, so this makes more sense than it seems.) The gist is basically Android doesn't suck for games anymore, starting with 2.2. Early adopter am cry. Truth be told, there isn't anything mind blowing available yet, but if cave ports ESPGaluda II, I'm jumping in, goddamnit!

In an ironic twist of fate, this blog features somewhat comprehensive coverage of this topic, so click the tags at the bottom to read impressions of the games they mention (Bomberman Dojo sucks!), and devices available.

Ignore this post

OK, here's the deal. I'm on vacation, so I shouldn't even be reading the internet, let alone blogging about it. Just pretend you didn't see this. It's not like anything of note happened over the past week. Hell, if you want proof, here's Famitsu.com reporting on Xbox 360 sales at US big-box stores.

In addition, the only one having any fun is Mask de Uh. He's been playing Rock Band over the past month and posting stuff about it. I don't know a damn thing about Rock Band, so I actually learned that the song list features stuff like Napalm Death and Brujeria. What the fuck? I might have to check that out. Additionally, Mask is doing his "foreign games" thing this Friday at something called the Acid Panda Cafe. I'm sort of worried about learning the kinds of places Mask hangs out in. ¥1,000 gets you in, but won't get you any drinks. And you're going to need them.

Symphony of despair

I've been ignoring pretty much anything to do with Castlevania since the second DS game, Portrait Of Ruin, and it's hideous Pokemon artwork. The HD console "reboot" isn't helping matters any. This series went from rising from dormancy like Dracula himself, by humans wishing it tribute, to a shambling zombie corpse. Something that was shown off at Konami's E3 2010 conference of legend was a "new" 2D rehash to be distributed over XLA, Akumajou Dracula (Calstlevania) Harmony Of Despair, or HD for short, geddit?

The 2D "IGA-vania's" have been pretty much recycling all their assets since 1993's seminal Rondo Of Blood, and this one seems to be the most blatant hack job to date. Take all the level tiles, and character sprites, mix 'em up in a random generator, and spew out a new level. Also, thanks to the low resolution of the original sources, the game looks like a playable map screen from Symphony Of The Night. To say I was underwhelmed by this prospect would be an understatement.

One tiny sliver of hope I noticed was the inclusion of protagonist Shanoa from the latest DS iteration, Order Of Ecclesia. Another interesting aspect were the redrawn character portraits, similar to the art overhaul Ecclesia got. Again, it's not the return of Ayami Kojima's master works, but it's a fuck ton better than Dawn Of Sorrow was. The third piece fell into place today, when I noticed that Houko Kuwashima would be voicing Shanoa. An interesting character design, drawn by a competent artist, and voiced by a favorite talent. That's worth somewhere around 1,200 MS Points.

Carnage Heart is back mofos

I always loved the idea of programming the mech's AI in the original Carnage Heart. Unfortunately, the game was pretty damn ugly even by PSX standards of the day, so I could never get into it. The sequel and handheld ports never made it to English speaking territories, unfortunately, so I never got to see an upgrade. Hopefully this anime teen drama convinces Aksys or someone to pick this one up. Also the game features both, direct control, and AI programming. I'm filled with dread over how this good idea can turn to shit. Four player ad-hoc? *shudder*

N32

This doesn't feel as extreme as I was led to believe. The demo version consists of the opening mission, but the boss has been replaced with a bunch of annoying cavalry units. The story has no setup whatsoever, you just jump head first and start hacking dudes. The framerate gets a little better in the later levels, after the smoke, fire, and brimstone effect has been removed. The music is also pretty forgettable. I won't be picking up this OST for $5. On top of all that, once I was sort of getting into the groove of things, my 360 RROD-ed in the ridiculous heat my geographic region is currently suffering through. Not funny :(

He was right: I went up against the first boss, that pink guy from the demo, and all I did was press X, X, X, X, and Y, Y, Y, Y, and I got my ass kicked. The problem here is that unlike the Dynasty Warriors games, which are broken in the player's favor, this game is broken against the player. When I'm wailing away at a boss, the infinitely respawning cannon fodder dudes are the biggest threat, since they can simply run up behind me and knock me out of my combo, and in fact a large enough group can continue to knock me around infinitely until I die. Payback's a bitch. To counteract this the designers included secondary "special" attacks with more effective crowd control properties. The problem is that they need to be activated by pressing and holding LB and hitting one of the face buttons, but only after these moves have been equipped during the (unintuitive) pre-battle menu. The game doesn't have any sort of tutorial, and for someone who didn't bother reading the manual, the battle system can therefore seem a bit cryptic. I don't think reading should be a requirement for a game of this nature.

We're sucked

Ah, government mandated holidays. Anyway, we didn't miss much. All the action is mainly in America with Persona 3 Portable is hitting the PSP today, Dragon Quest IX hitting the DS on Sunday. Next week Japan follows up with Last Ranker and Fire Emblem DS 2. Console games much? I just ordered Ninety Nine Nights II from Newegg, since it took Play-Asia a week to get the American version in to confirm the region compatibility. NTSC-free, PAL is screwed. I wonder why? It already runs at a sub standard frame rate.

Flinging feces

Looks like I was right. This guy seems to have more of a clue than most, but his business plan is still irrelevant. Re-releasing Kato & Ken over PSN? Who the fuck would want that? Maybe if Monkeypaw re-printed the actual carts and/or CD's, the hardcore collector nerds would be interested (I would be), but digital downloads of games no one remembers or cares about lost in a sea of shittacular downloadables is not my idea of the saving the gaming industry.

Revisionist theory

Quantum Theory was delayed shortly after the Koei and Tecmo merger earlier this year. The reason given was "to improve the game's quality." Sounds good to me. It's now being released some time in September. Today Tecmo Koei released the official cover art, and pre-order bonus info. Can we get a few more weeks delay to fix up that cover art? Blargh! How can a CG render of a nicely modeled CG character turn out ugly?

Senko no Ronde 2.2 RC1

G.Rev are Xbox veterans by this point. They've now jumped aboard the PC game maker mentality of patching the broken shit about their retail game. Senko no Ronde DUO was released only a month ago and already a big patch was rolled out yesterday over Xbox Live, with features like "more information of the status screen." I'm almost glad I didn't bother picking this up.