Water, Water Everywhere. . .

It now happens to be that wonderful time of the year again.  Not a time that only comes once a year, but one that happens over and over and over again.  And this, happens to be one of those times.  It's the time between finishing a game and picking up a new one to play.  I just finished The World Ends With You and a "Full Review" is on it's way and now I'm trying to decide, not only which game to play, but which system to play this unchosen game on.  We'll list the top contenders:

PC

Dead Space:  I've played about 30 minutes of this game about a month or so ago and I'd like to keep at it, but not because of the impending Dead Space 3 release on the horizon.

Penumbra: Black Plague:  Having finished the first game in this trilogy, I want to continue the story.

Anna:  A game that I picked up during Steam's Winter Holiday Christmas sale.  The trailer looked interesting and the game looked fun, despite some of the negative reviews.

I Am Alive:  Giving my like towards most things post-apocalyptic and that Steam had this game on sale, I did do the purchasing thing, but have yet to do the playing part.

DS/3DS

Dragon Quest VI:  I finished DQV a while back and I really want to play this and then play Dragon Quest IX.

Scribblenauts Unlimited:  As mentioned in my previous post, I played SU for about 30 minutes just to get a feel for the game, and because I just bought it and it arrived in the mail.  I might be able to get away with playing this on the side and not devoting chunks of time as I normally would with another game.

Infinite Space:  A game released by SEGA that I'd been on the lookout for for a number of years and only recently acquired.  A game, as far as I understand, where you can build, outfit, modify your own spaceship that apparently has a pretty steep learning curve, which is always a fun/frustrating challenge.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box:  I've played the first game and thought it was as much fun as I'd heard.  Puzzles are awesome, except sliding box puzzles and how the game explained why you had to do puzzles at every step was pretty smart.  Part 2 is calling.

PSP

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together:  I bought this game around December 2011, played it for an hour or so and then relinquished my PSP to Conklederp so she could play Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions.  I really liked of what little I played and I really want to continue.

Silent Hill: Origins:  I started playing this game for an hour or two and I think I got myself stuck.  This was before I realized that I was supposed to kill every monster on screen and running away is a legitimate strategy.

God of War: Ghost of Sparta:  I really liked the first PSP game in the God of War series (although maybe I should try and defeat the final boss first).

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona:  I started this game about I don't know how many months back and got stuck/lost when I was supposed to go somewhere and I couldn't find out where the building was in which quadrant of the city.  I didn't look online as I thought it was too early to revert to using Gamefaqs, but I'd like to try again before deciding to abandon the game.

So as you can see, I have a problem, very much in the First World category.  I may also have a problem with buying games and not playing them fast enough.  Or, I just happen to like games that take a lot of time to complete in lieu of shorter games like Super Mario Bros. which I can (or at least used to) complete multiple times in about an hour.

Let the voting begin.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

All In All, Chad's A Good Guy

First Impressions: The World Ends With You (DS)

I've been playing this game for a couple of weeks, which was shortly after I earned the Vivi character in Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy.  I'd been trying to unlock Vivi for sometime and after I was able to, I felt like I accomplished something and I played for a bit after that, but I haven't picked the game up since I put The World Ends With You in my DS, which again, was a couple of weeks ago.  Now that the background context is out of the way, on with the initial critique.

The World Ends With You is an odd game from Square Enix.  I mention Square Enix first off because the first thing I think of when I see those two juggernauts of RPG's next to each other are two things, Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior/Quest.  I obviously know there are plenty of other properties associated with that one massive company, but that's what comes to my mind.  Oh, and I guess the Kingdom Hearts franchise too, but I've never gotten into those games as the idea of Disney characters in a Final Fantasyesque type story/setting/whatever it is has never appealed to me.  Anyway!, Square Enix = Overworld Exploring RPG's.  This isn't the case with TWEWY.

Initially, TWEWY feels a lot like an RPG that Atlus would have come up with.  From the character designs to the way the game is played, even the music is somewhat reminiscent of the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series.  Does this mean that the game doesn't work well, coming from Square Enix?  Of course not!  Just because a game company puts something out that breaks a mold that works very well for them doesn't mean that the game is going to be horrible.  It's a very non-traditional game that works on a lot of levels, even if I know I'm playing part of the game inaccurately.

The battles in the game are what makes this game very different than a standard RPG.  The battles are in real time, similar to how the Tales... games are run: wandering around an over world and entering real time battles.  The actions in the battles are determined by which "pins" the main character, Neku, has equipped.  Different pins do different types of damage and the actions are executed in any number of different ways.  From "slashing" an enemy with the stylus, to "tapping" empty space to shoot a projectile towards and enemy, or "scratching" an open area to cause area damage.  There are a lot more types of damage and actions as I've made it through, maybe 1/3 of the game and I haven't collected all of the pins yet.  And this is only half of the battle system.  The other half takes place on the top screen with your partner.  That half is controlled with either the control pad or the ABXY buttons (depending if you're right or left handed).  For that you're supposed to pick out the "correct" card in the proper order in order to execute a combo.  I don't play it that way.  For the top person, I just button mash, pressing the control pad in whichever direction my opponent is facing.  It's not great, but it's working out somewhat well so far.

Coordination here is the key.  Left hand playing top screen with directional pad and right hand using the stylus on the bottom screen.  It's like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach.  All while being attacked.

As far as the storyline goes, it's a lot deeper and somewhat darker than I had originally anticipated and that's very much welcome.  That's all I want to say about the story as to not give it away for anyone (like me) who plays games four years after they've been released.  Even the fact that the game takes place in the Shibuya district of Tokyo and that I don't really know anything about that specific culture, I don't feel like I'm missing anything that's important to the game.  Sure, I'm sure there are things in the game that I'd be giddy about if I knew about Shibuya culture and the district itself, but it's something that I'm not too worried about.

I think it's safe to say though, that with 15 hours logged in so far, I would easily recommend this game to just about anyone.  Pokemon fans?  There's collecting.  RPG fans?  There's leveling of characters and items/weapons.  Action fans?  Battles in real time.  Rhythm Music game fans?  There's pretty awesome music.  See, a little something for everyone.  Except if you're only a fan of FPS', then you probably won't like this game, and you probably wouldn't own a DS anyway.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

More For The Rest Of Us. 

First Impressions: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP)

I've played for just over an hour so far and I currently have mixed feelings about it, although not so mixed that I'm going to stop playing.

First off, a brief description of the game for those of y'all who'ren't (yes, double contractions are accepted here) familiar with the Megami Tensei series, is that it's similar to Pokémon in that you "collect" "demons" and facets of your personality to fight for you in random encounters.  The goal isn't to "catch 'em all," but having a list of demons/facets that you have had is pretty cool.

In the Shin Megami Tensei series (hereto referred to as SMT), I've played about 80% of SMT: Strange Journey on the DS, so the concepts in this game are not entirely foreign to me.

At this moment in the game, the only thing that it taking a while to get used to is the map and moving around within the overworld.  The game world is set up in four districts and, presently anyway, you move around by walking through the streets.  The problem with all this is that your character has been a resident of the area for I don't know how long, yet the player has only just been introduced to the city/world/map and knowing where things are is a bit confusing.  None of the buildings are labelled.  Part of me says that I'm only complaining too much and want my hand held just to cross the street.  My defense is that when, during dialogue, you're told that you need to go to Building X, which is just east of Building Z.  That's all and good, except that I don't know where Building Z is.  So within the first hour, I went looking online for a map of the four districts so I can at the very least where the damn buildings are, rather than wandering aimlessly trying to enter any building that looks somewhat plausible.

Part of my problem could very well be that I'm not sitting down and devoting and hour+ to getting to know the world and familiarizing myself with the locations over everything.  I admit, that's all on me, and something I should get around to fixing.

I should probably also say something about the music, which I am quite enjoying.  For the most part, the music seems pretty standard fare for RPG's, except that the music has a modern flare to it.  And then there's the "Battle" music, which sounds like a J-Pop song with vocals singing something in Japanese with the obligatory English words thrown in for exotic-ness.  I'll admit, the song is pretty catchy and I'm really interested to see if the song changes as the game progresses, which would be really awesome.

So that's really where I'm at with SMT: Persona right now.  I really want to like this game as it's apparently a hugely popular RPG series in Japan and I want to get into another RPG that isn't a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest series, not that I have problems/issues with either of those series, but it is nice to have something fresh that I'm not entirely familiar with.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I'll Take A Look At Your Specials Menu, Thanks.

Cartridges In Play

I as well am playing multiple games now, as I also tend to do with books.  Not because I'm all like "Look at me, I can read 5 books at the same time and not get lost, see how awesome I am!?"  I'm playing multiple games because I just have a number of games that I have yet to play.

So let's get down to them shall we:

Nintendo DS

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (2009)

I finally acquired this game last December and have been looking forward to playing since whenever Nintendo announced that it would be released for the DS.  Aside from the updated graphics, it plays very much like a mid 1990s RPG (JRPG I guess, although I'd like to do another post on that whole bundle of chips later), you end up with a party of varied characters, level building traveling around a world map, purchasing weapons/armor/items, dungeon crawling, fighting end of cave bosses et cetera.  Basically very typical Dragon Quest gameplay, nothing too original.

I've since read on Wikipedia, that Dragon Quest V is considered to be the  favorite in the whole series (out of 9 at the moment, not including spin offs) by the creator Yuji Hori.  However, I'm not finding as exciting as I thought that I was going to.  Don't get me wrong, I'm very much enjoying the game and I like the story line and the fact that you start out the game as a young child and eventually progress to having your own offspring.  I guess I just don't feel as connected to the characters as I thought I might.

I think what's disappointing me is that there're things that happen to the main character that I would've like to have seen differently in the way things were handled.  Without giving anything away, let's say something happens to the main character, then one of your friends says something like "Wow, we wondered what happened to you.  We're glad you're back now!"  Oh, and the world's gone completely to shit and we're facing a potential apocalypse.  I just have to keep telling myself that this game originally came out in 1992 and has a somewhat more "cartoonish" feel to it than say, Final Fantasy IV, of around the same time; Final Fantasy IV (or Final Fantasy II on the SNES) came out in 1991).

I'm nearing the end of the game right now so I might make an addendum after I finish.

Sony PSP

LittleBigPlanet (2009)

I've been playing this game off and on since I got it for my birthday (just over a month ago).  I never played the first in the series that came out for PS3 so all I knew about the game before playing it was that you played a burlap sack character and that it was pretty much a puzzle type platformer.  Which, pretty much is what it is in it's most simplest form.

One of the other main selling points of the game/series is that the game also encourages you to create your own levels and then share them online via the Playstation Network.  Honestly right now, I don't know if I'll take advantage of this side of the game, or at least as much as the game intends and I think this is more of a personal thing rather than some flaw with the design of the game.  But as for game design, I love the fact that everything in the game looks like it was snipped from a coloring book.  Early on in the game, I was wondering how enemies would be introduced and what few enemies there are, are brilliantly done.  They're simply cutouts that are either swung along chains or move along carts.

Something that I don't fully understand (and maybe appreciate as well) is the whole "thing" about stickers.  Moving stickers, which are akin to decals on the background scenery, is somewhat amusing, but I'm personally more interested in completing the levels than making them look asthetically different.  I'm assuming I'm missing something here, but until I'm told what it is, I can't tell and therefore I happy to be ignorant.

One thing that I am currently sad about with the game is the lack of the narrator being around.  Early on in the game, the narrator (who sounds a lot like the guy who did the narration for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) tells you how to do certain things and what options the game delivers.  It only makes sense to cut out the helping narrator as the game progresses since, one would hope, you don't need directions how to do things half way through the game.  I'm just sad because I like the guy's voice and the dialogue that was written for him was pretty funny/adorable/witty.

And yet, another game that I have yet to complete, but slowly working on it.

And now, because I feel that I should mention what games are up in my queue after the previous two games mention are finished, I will.

DS: The World is Not Enough and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings.

PSP: Tactic's Ogre: Let Us Cling Together I and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona.

PC:  Crayon Physics Deluxe and NightSky.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I Need To Stop Seeing People About Horses