As you probably know, last week was kind of crazy in terms of game releases. Along with the two games I'm writing about here, a Splinter Cell game came out, as did an XCOM game. Probably some other stuff too, but nothing that caught my attention. I'd like to play Splinter Cell: Blacklist at some point, but I just bought Saints Row IV and Divekick last week, and then today I bought a year of PlayStation Plus, so I've used up my "budget" for the time being.

Divekick.

Even if Divekick had been complete garbage, after following that game for months and months, I couldn't not buy it. All those Divekick eSports Hours alone were worth the $10. But hey, it turns out that Divekick is actually really fun. Good thing too, because I had a couple friends and a pizza come over that night to play it. Well, the pizza didn't play it, we ate the pizza. If I knew a pizza that could play video games, I would have betrayed that fool years ago for profit.

I'm not going to recap the basic mechanics of Divekick, that's what the GB QL is for. I really like it, and so did my friends, but I think the promise of a simple fighting game that anyone can play may have been lost a while ago. I haven't had someone like my dad try playing it yet, but I kinda feel like not having a control stick for movement would mess up a lot of people like him, that haven't really played any games in a good ten years or so. But maybe I'm wrong, I don't know!

That's irrelevant anyway, because I'm not going to sit here and complain about how the original pitch was lost. I love how insane and weird the game has gotten. No, I'm not good with all the characters, but who is ever good with ALL of the characters in any fighting game? Well, some people are. Probably.

I've been flipping back and forth between playing story mode with various characters, and trying matches online. Unsurprisingly, I'm not particularly great against people online. But I've gotten good against the AI with most of the characters (on medium, at least). Not sure if that's entirely because of my skill, or if I've just figured out what the AI is and isn't good at. Either way, end of story mode S-Kill with infinite Kick Meter doesn't completely crush me like he used to, so I'm happy about that.

I do think it's hilarious that all the people at Iron Galaxy (at least the ones who talked on their live streams) seemed convinced that The Baz wasn't a very good player, but he's the one I have the most trouble against, and (from what little I've seen online) seems like he's the really tricky one.

That's about all I have to say about Divekick.

No matter how hard I try, or want to, I'm just not good with S-Kill. Conceptually I like him a lot, even if quite a bit of that is thinking it's funny that the character based on Seth Killian is the villain. Oh well.

Saints Row IV.

I'm having trouble summing up this game in words. How about this instead:

This game's a ton of fun. No, it's not quite as good as Saints Row the Third. A lot of it feels like it was slapped together in a rush to get the game out before the next gen consoles are released (because it kinda was, if you know the backstory of this game). Lots of sound effects are either way too quiet (super sprinting into cars), or not there (specific moment during the final boss that I shan't spoil, but that may have been a glitch). It's the same city, lots of the same clothing items, weapons, other things.

That said, when this game is at its best, it's so incredibly, ridiculously, and ludicrously insane and good that I'm flabbergasted. Saints Row the Third was a really funny game, but this game is hilarious from start to finish. Well, not quite, but I definitely laughed more than I did in The Third. Part is from the excellent writing, part is from the nonsensical situations the game puts you in, and part of that is from the kinda slap-dash quality that permeates a lot of the game. There are times in the game when you fight enemies that are intentionally glitched out, and they just look like mistakes made in attempting 3D modeling. And that's hilarious.

There's tons of fourth wall breaking, like a certain former professional wrestler who, when asked (in game) about why he was there, he said, "I needed money." A lot of the humor is referential in nature, which could have been a fatal mistake, but I think most of that stuff is done really well. I do feel like I missed out on a few jokes, because I hadn't played Saints Row 1 or 2, but I got enough of the jokes. I do echo what others have said and think that The Third should be required playing before starting SRIV, but even if that wasn't the case, you should play The Third. It's a great game.

I think the powers are a real, ahem, game changer. The Third was a really fun game to play, but IV is something else entirely. Throwing fireballs is fun, but when you stomp the ground to cause nearby enemies and vehicles to float in the air (or shrink the enemies), then use a skill that surrounds you in fire, and instead of throwing the fireball, you just run near the enemies to light them on fire (while they are floating in the air), and then, just for good measure, run up the side of a building, jump off, and punch into the ground so hard that a nuclear explosion goes off? That's incredible. Also, there's telekinesis. That's fun too.

I should say that I played on PS3. No, the frame rate was not as good as it would have been on PC. But it seemed better than what I had been seeing people were saying it was on 360, but I can't say for certain. But it definitely ran pretty well, and definitely within my tolerance limits. I will say that the "Tornado" upgrade for the super sprint seemed to really hurt the frame rate, and then the game crashed whilst I was using it. I thought this might happen, as the description said it created a tornado behind the character that sucked cars into it, so I kept a save from before buying that (you can't turn powers/upgrades off), and I reloaded that save. I would recommend against buying that upgrade if you're on a console.

About the only other thing I can think of to say (without getting into spoilers, which I won't) is that there are a bunch of story missions (and Loyalty Missions) where the game gins up some excuse for taking away your powers, because those powers would have broken those missions. I kinda like that, and I kinda don't. I feel like a game that was made with more time would have been designed in a way that this wouldn't have happened. But on the other hand, some of those missions are really great, and honestly couldn't have worked that well WITH the powers. So it's good and bad.

I do hope that whatever Volition does next, they take their time. Personally, I hope Saints Row Plead the Fifth (my hope for the title, well, that or Saints Row Five-Ever, since they didn't go with Saints Row Forever) is even bigger and crazier than IV. With next gen consoles, and more time, they could make a truly massive world that could handle even bigger and crazier powers. And given the ending of SRIV (again, no spoilers), but just about ANYTHING could be possible for the next game. Literally anything. Literally. In the old sense of the word. Not the new one.

This game made me realize that I need to watch the movie "They Live" at some point. That's all I will say.

BUY MY BOOK! PLEASE! US Link. UK Link.Canada Link.

Nothing else to say! But the Year of Luig stops for no one!

No preamble, straight to the games!

The Last of Us.

I've kinda been putting off writing about The Last of Us because it is, in a lot of ways, kind of the biggest, and "most important" game released thus far this year (note, for future people, that I wrote this in the week before Games of the Year Saints Row IV and Divekick were released). I didn't play it right when it was released, but I certainly played it closer to release than I have with a lot of other games that I've played recently.

And now that I'm here, writing about this game, I'm still not exactly sure what to say about the game. I did like it. A lot. I might even go so far as to say that I loved it. But... I dunno. I didn't love every aspect of it. Let me start with the things that I did like.

I liked the game play. I enjoy playing stealth games, and while this isn't strictly a stealth game, a lot of it does focus around getting through areas as stealthily as possible, due to overwhelming odds against the Joel and Ellie. At least, that's the theory. I haven't had a chance to play the game on anything other than Normal, but I will say that by the end of the game on Normal, between the numerous weapons and other upgrades, Joel is practically a one man army. Not as much of a one man army as Nathan Drake (who manages to murder hundreds of dudes with a scant TWO guns), but close. Still, even if the game got a little easy toward the end, I still loved the stealth emphasis of the game, even if I almost always ended up alerting the enemies and having to fight my way through.

I also really liked the voice acting. Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson are both phenomenal as Joel and Ellie, and the rest of the cast is about as good. Nolan North makes a special appearance as well, in a pretty un-Northern role, which I appreciated. The facial animations help back up the voice acting, as do the amazing graphics.

Or, at least, the amazing graphics in the cutscenes. See, my biggest complaint in the game is that I'm pretty sure all the cutscenes, or at least most of them, are pre-rendered. At the very least, they all look A LOT better than the game does during normal game play, which ends up making the part where I was playing look a lot less impressive. It's still a mostly good looking game, aside from the odd plant or weird ground texture, but the dissonance between cutscene graphics and in game graphics is something I never like, and it seems more apparent here than it did in something like the Uncharted games. But maybe I just wasn't thinking about it before, I don't know.

And I think it's a little ridiculous that Joel can carry about twelve guns in his backpack, but he can only carry about three clips of ammo for his pistol. Now, I know that in a real situation, you could very easily clog up your backpack with weapons and forget to bring ammo, but I think I would have preferred if the game had fewer guns, but let me carry more ammo. I'm not saying there should be more ammo in the game, I'm saying that there were times where I couldn't bring extra ammo for something like my pistol because I was full on pistol ammo, but then ten minutes later I would find a new gun and start carrying ammo for that one around as well. Again, I've only played on Normal, so I don't know if that changes on higher difficulties, but I doubt that it does. It's probably just less ammo.

And the story? Well, I'm not really a big fan of zombie fiction, and this one was kinda...cliched, in a way. I don't really want to spoil anything, but I will say that I think the dialog is fantastic throughout, and that I did like the ending. Or, at least, I think the ending is true to what the characters would have done, which is (I think, and I'm sure many would agree), kind of the golden rule of writing good characters.

Either way, I did enjoy the game quite a bit, but I hope the next game Naughty Dog does is a bit different than this. This is the fourth cover based third person action game starring a white dude that Naughty Dog has done in a row, and I'd like it if they did something different. I dunno, like a cover based action game with a black dude, or hell, even a lady! Haha, just kidding, that'll never happen. (That's a joke, not me being sexist.)

The Walking Dead: 400 Days.

In keeping with the zombie theme, I also played this! It was all right. If you haven't played this, then I'll say that it's DLC for Telltale's The Walking Dead, but instead of focusing on one character, this tells five, shorter stories about different characters. And while this is kind of a novel approach, it comes off feeling like it exists only to see how people react to these new characters for the future of their Walking Dead series.

But I think its biggest problem is that every time I was starting to really get into one of the stories, it ended and I had to move on. I guess that means it's good, because most of those stories did hook me by the end, but I also feel kinda ripped off. I shouldn't, because it's only $5, but I dunno. It's all right, worth playing if you beat the rest of The Walking Dead. It has rock, paper, scissors, and much like in real life, I lost.

Hotline Miami.

I uh, well, I should say that the main reason I played this is that when Ryan Davis passed away, one of the many things that I thought of was how much he loved this game, and its crazy style. So I decided to play it. And, during the course of events that led to me playing it, I wound up with two copies of the game, one on Steam, and one on PSN. But that's what happens when my friend gifts it to me on Steam, despite my saying that my computer would not be able to run it at a smooth framerate (which it wasn't). But he only paid $2.50 for it, and I didn't mind paying the full $10 for the PSN version.

But while my reason for playing it was mainly centered around Ryan, I ended up really liking the game. Definitely a lot more than I was expecting. I know the reaction of some of you readers is going to be something like, "Well, of course you liked it, it's a great game!"

Anyway, I played it, I beat it, and I had a lot of fun. The game is ridiculous, has style for days, and made me feel like a psychopath as I murdered dudes whilst listening to that insane music blasting in my headphones. Yes, headphones on a TV. Because I was using a small, not great TV.

BUT NO LONGER!

For, you see, I bought a new TV! Well, really, my dad bought it, because he's the one with the money, and I'm still living at home, but whatever! New TV! It was no sales tax weekend here in Taxachusetts, so we went to the local Sears on Friday (before the no sales tax weekend started) to look at TVs after seeing Elysium. We ended up buying it then, with the guy taking off an amount of money roughly equivalent to the sales tax, which led to a weird situation where we saved money, but still paid the sales tax to the state. I actually kinda like that, because unlike some people, I think governments need money to run, but I'll not let this turn into a political blog. Yet.

It's a 60 inch Sharp LED Aquos TV. Not a smart TV. We specifically asked if they had a non-smart version of the one on display, and they did. It was cheaper too. I don't know the exact model number or anything off hand, but the TV seems pretty great thus far. The games I've played (Red Dead Redemption, Borderlands 2) look beautiful, and the Blu-Ray of District 9 was absolutely stunning.

Now, I've used HDTVs before. Even that little not so good one I was using was a 1080P TV. But the picture on that thing wasn't really very good. At least not compared to the new TV. Granted, it's only been a few days, but I am absolutely loving this new TV, so I'm very happy with it.

I have played one other game that I will write about one more game here. Normally I like to beat games before I write about them, but I made the exception for this one. This is because I think I might have a special, Take-Two themed blog later this week, before Games of the Year Saints Row IV and Divekick come out next week. And this game, is, well...

I don't think this game is very good! That's why I went with a comically large picture here. For comedy.

So, I'm, I think, between three and four hours into the game. I don't really know how long it is, though I suppose I could look that up. The internet says nine to ten hours-ish. I can't be almost halfway into the game, so maybe it just FELT like I had played for 4 hours.

And the sad thing about this game is that as many faults as it has, I think it could have been pretty good with just a few "simple" changes. The first, and most important, being the controls. Let me say this simply:

Controlling a 3D character in a 3D space with a D-Pad is bad game design! Not once has moving Samus around felt natural and good. Not once has any of the platforming (which there isn't a ton of, to be fair) felt fun. These overly "simple" controls have made what could have been a good game into a clunky and unfun game.

Another problem is the lighting. There are a lot of areas in the game that are so dark that I can barely see. Now, at first I thought it might be the TV, but then I remembered that everything else has looked great on the TV thus far, and that the areas with good lighting in the game are perfectly visible. Then I thought the game might just have a brightness setting that I missed, but no, it doesn't. The only options are for the language and subtitles.

The story is bad, the voice acting is bad, the graphics aren't very good, even for a Wii game. Really, the only reason I have to finish the game is that I want to be able to say that I beat it.

On the bright side, I only paid $10 for it. And this was a while ago, too. I had bought it back when the last, big HDTV we had was working, but then it stopped working, and I decided not to play it until I had something widescreen that was big enough to have far enough away to use the Wii sensor bar. And boy, I sure am glad I waited. (Not.)

This music is about the only thing that can cheer me up after playing Other M. Ugh.

That's about it. I have some other stuff I want to write about, but that can wait.

If you are looking for an electronic book to read that is only a dollar and is a sci-fi adventure with whimsy and violence, and somehow have ignored my advertising of it in previous blogs, well, here you go: US Link. UK Link.Canada Link. If you're getting tired of seeing this at the end of all my blogs, then just find ways to trick everyone you know into buying it. Eventually it'll turn from a tiny snowball of sales into a giant avalanche of sales that will keep me out of the poorhouse and from having to have a real job!

Or not. That probably won't happen, but a man can dream! And I can too, but my dreams usually aren't that pleasant, but I'll spare you the details.

So, as always, I leave you with another addition to the Year of Luigi with another Luigified picture. This time, The Luigi of Us!

Hey! Back again! I said I would be getting back to blogging much faster than before, AND THIS TIME I MEANT IT!

So, earlier this year Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was free on Club Nintendo. Well, free if you had the points to redeem for Super Mario RPG, which I did. I had wanted to play it for years, and it had been the only Mario RPG game that I had not played (not counting the soon to be released Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, which I will not play because I don't own a 3DS). And surprise surprise, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

But of the Mario RPG games that I have played, I would probably rank it somewhere between Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (which is not particularly good) and Paper Mario (which is pretty good). Of course, my perspective on the game is entirely different from most of the people who played the game, as I played it AFTER all the other Mario RPGs, as opposed to the people who played it when it was newly released on the SNES all those years ago.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a great game that I think is worth playing, it's just that the other Mario RPGs since then are better games. But that doesn't change the fact that Super Mario RPG was trying to do some new and interesting things with the RPG genre back in the day (so far as I know, at least, I don't have an all encompassing knowledge of SNES era RPGs).

The biggest differentiator, and the aspect that I think the newer games have improved upon the most, is the combat. If you've ever played a Mario RPG, then you know that button presses mid combat (which is turn based) to boost attack on enemies or lessen damage to your characters is common place. And, as you might expect from the way I've structured this blog and this paragraph, Super Mario RPG did it first. But it's also nowhere near to the extent of something like the Mario & Luigi games, where some special attacks require multiple presses of different buttons, and every enemy attack can either be countered or dodged, making it possible to play without ever taking any damage (though you would have to play PERFECTLY).

Even though that aspect of the combat is simpler than the newer releases, it still made the combat fun and enjoyable, though overall I thought it was a little on the easy side. Except for the final boss, which took me a couple tries to beat. I do vaguely remember reading something once about a super secret boss fight in the game that is optional and really hard, but I never found that, and I am clearly too lazy to go look that up myself.

Being a Mario RPG, the story is mostly light-hearted and goofy, which is good. It's definitely not as funny as something like Bowser's Inside Story or The Thousand Year Door, but there are definitely plenty of laughs to be had in the game. The ones I found funniest were surrounding the character Booster (and his rad music) and a joke where party member Mallow references Bruce Lee, which almost drove me insane trying to figure out how characters in the Mario universe can know about Bruce Lee. I'll just consider that one an instance of great 90s JRPG translations. There were also some good gags involving fake Power Rangers as well.

As you can tell by that aforementioned rad music (if you're listening to it), the music in the game is pretty good. But the weird thing, and bear with me here, is that, well, this is another thing that really only applies to me, and maybe a few other people. I played this game after watching quite a bit of the Video Game Championship Wrestling, or VGCW for short. And I knew the character Geno was from Super Mario RPG, but I didn't know that so much of the VGCW's music was from this game. This resulted in a lot of instances of me hearing music in the game, recognizing it from VGCW, and then feeling weird about how the music was making me think of VGCW, instead of watching VGCW and having the music make me think of Super Mario RPG, which was probably the intended effect. Oh well!

Overall I really liked Super Mario RPG, and if you want a not super difficult SNES era JRPG to play that isn't super long (like 15-20 hours if you take your time), this one is highly recommended. Maybe play the Virtual Console version like I did, so you don't have to try to find an old cart, and then have the save battery die halfway into the game.

So far as I know, this is the only time that Luigi appears in the game, which was my biggest disappointment. This is during the credits, I should say. Spoilers.

I should say at this point that I do not have a clear recollection of the order in which I played games this summer, so do not take what I blog about in this, or any future blogs, as a representation of the order in which I played games this summer. Because clearly having that distinction is important, and what you, dear readers, were thinking about. I also don't have THAT MUCH stuff to talk about for all the games I've played thus far, so I might try to rapid fire my way through a few of them here.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

This game is really cool. Ever since the first Call of Juarez, I had been interested in the Call of Juarez games because of my love of westerns. Well, not really westerns so much as spaghetti westerns, by which I really mean the Man with No Name Trilogy, but I like other westerns as well. But I had never actually gone so far as to play any of the Juarez games because they didn't seem like they were good enough (based on reviews) to pay the full $60 for. Thus, they ended up being categorized under, "I might buy this if I see it cheap enough in store," which almost always results in my never playing the game in question.

And then Call of Juarez: The Cartel came out, which was so bad (again, based on what I heard/read/saw in the Quick Look) that it practically killed any interest I had in the Juarez games. Also, it wasn't a western.

But then Gunslinger came out, and was rad, so I bought it and played it. Then I New Game Plus'd it, and that game was still rad through a second playthrough. There's not really much else to say though. Nice style, great voice acting, and fun gun play. But nothing really outstanding or worth noting here. Definitely recommended if an action packed and low priced first person shooter is what you are looking for.

Bulletstorm

I've felt bad about not playing Bulletstorm since it was released back in...2011? Yup, 2011. I had played the demo, really liked it, I had seen GB's coverage of it, including that ridiculous mailbag video they did where Jeff rooted around through a package of meat for a USB drive and spent bullet casings, and I was really excited to play that game. But then I decided to wait for it to go on sale, and... I didn't play it until it was on sale for $5 on Xbox Live earlier this summer.

And given the fact that I beat the game in about the span of one morning, I'd say $5 was a good price. I mean, it was tons of fun, and clearly a lot of craft and care went into making this insane game, but it was pretty short. Either that or my memory is wrong and I'm forgetting a large chunk of my playing it.

Regardless, I had a lot of fun playing the game, and now I feel bad for People Can Fly, because they were forced to make that Gears of War game after Bulletstorm didn't sell well enough. Well, I didn't play Gears of War: Judgment, so I shouldn't really pass, er, opinions on it, but I wish People Can Fly had done something else instead. But that's what I get for trying to save money instead of supporting nonsense in video games.

And that's why I will be buying Divekick on Day One, and will attempt to buy Saints Row IV (assuming it isn't completely broken on PS3 or something) as soon as I can. But I'll have to go to a store to get that one (or order off Amazon), so I can't guarantee that I can do that Day One.

Speaking of Amazon dot com, and things that are dumb, why don't you check out my electronic and self published book on Amazon? It's only a dollar! I would say the name here, but in retrospect, it's a really bad title that I wish I had not gone with, so you can click the link to find out. If you've already bought it, then thanks, and sorry that you read through this paragraph for no reason!

US Link. UK Link.Canada Link. It's available in other regions as well, but only in English. But if you're reading this, I think it's a safe assumption that you know how to read English.

Nothing to report on my second novel. I probably shouldn't say this, but I think October-ish is a good guess for when it might be ready for releasing. I really need to get back to harassing my friends into reading it through and checking for plot holes. Though, I guess if they haven't, then that might not be the best sign about the book's quality, but forget you ever read this sentence! It'll be great!

I think that's a long enough blog for now. I'll try to write something up about other games that I've been playing (maybe with more thematic consistency) in the near future (like next week-ish).

But before I go, here's a more Luigi-fied image from Super Mario RPG.

Eh, I had made this as a GIF with transparency, not with ugly white borders around it, so here's a bonus Luigi picture that I didn't just make haphazardly at the last possible second:

Year of Luigi!

The year was 2006. I was still in high school, and it was summer. I had purchased an Xbox 360, but didn't have much to play on it. Call of Duty 2 was a good game, as were the Original Xbox Halo games, but nothing got me excited that summer like a certain zombie game.

Dead Rising. I bought it, and I played a ton of it. I knew going in that it was a game that required a lot of leveling, and restarting the game. And I was fine with that, at least at first. The game had its issues, sure, but the things that made it great were astounding. The number of zombies on screen was, at the time, mind blowing. It was a true example of something not possible on the previous generation of consoles. And running around killing hundreds of zombies was fun, which was a nice bonus.

But the more I played, the more the negative aspects of the game started creeping in. The controls were fine for fighting zombies, but human enemies? Not so much. Especially in the boss fights. Take, for example, the first boss fight in the game. It's a fight against Carlito, and it takes place in the game's food court. Carlito is on an upper level shooting down with a P90 at Brad (an agent of the Department of Homeland Security), and Brad gives Wartime Photojournalist Frank West a pistol to aid in the fight.

The only problem is that fighting Carlito with that pistol is about the last thing that you want to do. First off, the shooting controls in the game are awful. It's basically the controls for Resident Evil 4, only worse (right trigger to go into aiming mode, left stick to aim, X to shoot). At least in RE4 there was something resembling speed in the way you aimed, and in that game you could reload guns. Here, Frank aims his gun at the speed of molasses and just throws guns away when they're out of ammo.

But even if the aiming controls were good and responsive, guns just don't do enough damage to be worthwhile, at least against bosses. Maybe if you got nothing but headshots, but don't forget that Carlito is shooting back at you. And, naturally, every few shots from him causes Frank to stagger and lose his aim.

Instead the best strategy (so far as I could tell) is to climb up to Carlito's level and wail on him as quickly as you can with a melee weapon. If you have a good cleaver or a baseball bat, it doesn't take too long, but it still boils down to mashing a button and hoping the AI doesn't shoot you while you're at it. Then Carlito leaves, and you have to fight him again the next day (this time Carlito has a sniper rifle, and if you take too long, Brad dies), but at least then you have access to a store where you can loot katanas, which are fast and do high damage.

But it was neither of those bosses that got me to stop playing Dead Rising. It wasn't the convicts in the jeep in the park with their mounted turret, it wasn't the crazy store clerk with the shopping cart. No, it was Isabella on that motorcycle. After numerous attempts, I just gave up on the game. I wasn't having fun, and it was making me angry. And by this point, other games were coming out (including the Wii, which was close on the horizon), so I put Dead Rising aside, though I vowed to return, eventually.

And I did! Almost every year after 2006, I tried, at least once, to beat the game again. But these were half-hearted at best. And in 2012, I didn't even try at all. But this year, the year 2013, I decided that this was it. The new consoles were coming (er, are coming), and if I didn't beat this game now, I was never going to beat it. So I sat down, newly determined, and dived back into Dead Rising.

And I beat 72 Hour Mode. It wasn't really that hard. The motorcycle boss definitely took me a few tries, but really the hardest part of that. But even after my triumph over 72 Hour Mode, I felt deflated. I knew that there was Overtime Mode after that, the Instruction Manual said as much. But, well, I guess now I'm getting into real SPOILER territory, so if you're a crazy person who cares about this game's story (don't), and haven't played it, then stop reading this and go reevaluate your life. Maybe go talk with some friends or something, I don't know.

Anyway, late in 72 Hour Mode, a bunch of soldiers show up and start killing all the zombies in the mall. But, at this point in the story, you can actually just hide from them until they leave, which they do a couple (in game) hours before the helicopter is due to arrive. Then it's just a leisurely stroll through the mall to the helipad where you get to watch a cutscene of the helicopter crashing, and Frank looking all depressed.

Then Overtime Mode starts, where the zombies are back, despite being wiped out, as are the soldiers, despite them all leaving. And on top of all this, now Frank has (somehow) been infected with zombie-ism, and he and Isabella (who despite trying to kill Frank earlier, is working with him, which is explained in the story earlier) are trying to make up a medicine to keep Frank from turning. But, like I said, the mall is now filled with soldiers. And these soldiers are tough, and carry machine guns. My first attempt at fighting them met with abject failure. But for whatever reason, instead of killing Frank, they knocked him out, took all his gear and clothes (not counting underwear, because of course an M rated game with the gory killing of thousands of zombies, plenty of people, and lots of cursing can't have any nudity), and then there's a mini-game to escape. But after escaping I didn't see any apparent way to get Frank's stuff back, so I just turned the 360 off.

Did I spend all this time only to meet failure in another spot?

Of course not! In beating the game, I leveled up to Level 40, and in doing so, I unlocked the final speed upgrade. So, I decided to go back into 72 Hour Mode to at least fool around with the increased speed. I ended up beating it again, this time using the small chainsaws and magazine technique on the bosses (which makes the game WAY EASIER). Oh, I should say, for those who don't know, you can find magazines in the game that, when in your inventory, they give you various bonuses, like making certain weapons last longer, making food items restore more health, or teaching Frank conversational Japanese.

And when I beat it, I went into Overtime Mode... This time with my small chainsaws. And I realized that one whack from a small chainsaw was enough to kill a soldier, so I decided to keep on trucking. And eventually that lead to the final boss of the game, which is, of course, a two part affair.

The first part is a boring, but mostly easy, turret sequence where you control a machine gun on the back of a jeep, and you shoot at a tank. The tank has weak spots, and you need to shoot down the various missiles and whatnot that it sends your way. After this there's a cutscene, and Frank finds himself on top of a tank fighting some military man, and the tank is surrounded by zombies. But all the weapons and health items I had were gone, so naturally I died. And I had to start from the last time the game saved, which was before I even got to the jeep with the machine gun. Only slightly before, but playing through that boring turret sequence again was, well, boring. But that time I beat the military man.

And my quest was over. So, naturally, I went right into Infinite Mode, and lasted two (in game) days in that before Frank starved to death (because that mode adds starvation). And then I stopped playing.

But, like I said, my quest was over. It only took seven years, but I beat Dead Rising. Sure, if I had been more patient, I could have beaten it back in 2006, but whatever. I wouldn't have a story to tell if that was the case. I'm glad I did beat it, because in getting to the later parts of the game, and in leveling up to the level cap (50), I've really grown to appreciate Dead Rising.

See, Dead Rising isn't really a game about killing zombies. It's a game about not killing zombies, and trying to get as many survivors as you can. Sure, even then, you have to deal with terrible survivor AI, and pathing, but whatever! End game Dead Rising is fun because of how fast and powerful Frank has become. And because at level 50 you unlock a zombie walk that tricks zombies into thinking Frank is one of them, but is so painfully slow that it's not actually useful at all. But I think that's really fun.

So...yeah. I had fun. But I'll never play a Dead Rising game again (probably). I have no interest in playing any of the Dead Rising 2 games, and I highly doubt I will have an Xbox One. And based on what I've read, it sounds like Microsoft is too heavily invested in Dead Rising 3 for it to find its way to PS4. There might be a PC version at some point, but unless I get a lot of money, I doubt I'll have a gaming PC either.

Speaking of which, here's my obligatory "Go buy my book" segment! US Link. UK Link.Canada Link. It's only a dollar, or the equivalent in your nation of choice. Pulpy Sci-Fi Adventure awaits you! Or not, you don't have to buy it. And maybe pulpy is a really dated term to use, given that it's only available as an electronic book.

At this point I've, well, I wouldn't say admitted defeat, but I know that just putting a few links here in a blog isn't going to get big sales. Maybe one or two of you will buy it, and maybe even read it. I've been told it's quite good. Or at least good. But it's not going to lead to long term, sustained sales that I would like. At this point it would take something weird like a celebrity endorsement, or me being famous for something else for it to sell.

Which is why I really need to get back to work on my next book. I've probably said that I have a finished draft, I've just been waiting for a couple people I know to read it and tell me if it makes sense. But if they don't get on that by the end of the summer, I'll just have to publish it as is, plot holes or not! Well, I'll go through it for typos and stuff, but that's not the same as having someone else read it and pass judgment on the quality of the story. It might be hard to understand if you've never done it, but when you create something that big (and my novels are decently sized, though not super long), and the entirety of it came from your mind, it's REALLY hard to determine if it's any good or not. I mean, I wouldn't have written it if I thought it was bad, right? I dunno.

Oh, right, video games. Well, actually that piece of art is something I found on Twitter. I believe it was an artist's interpretation of what MGSV would look like if it was a direct to VHS film in the 90s, and well, I thought you would all like to see it.

It's been a while since the last time I wrote up a blog about video games. The last one I wrote was about Ryan Davis, but I have played video games since June 3rd, both new and old. And I want to write something up about them, but I think I've said enough for now. After seven years of trying, Dead Rising deserved this much space, and its own post, so you'll have to wait for my thoughts on Super Mario RPG, The Last of Us, Hotline Miami, Borderlands 2, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Bulletstorm, and more(?).

Until then, the Year of Luigi rages on, whether or not you want it to, or are even playing any Nintendo games (I'm not, I don't even own a 3DS or a Wii U).

Also, as a final note, I should say that it's almost impossible to search for Dead Rising on this site. Typing that in comes up with everything BUT the original game. Even some dumb iPhone game from 2010. It's weird. I had to attach this to the Dead Rising Franchise page because Dead Rising the game page wouldn't come up. WEIRD!

In the grand scheme of things, I jumped on the Giant Bomb train fairly late. It wasn't until early 2010 that Giant Bomb became anything more than "That website made by the guy that GameSpot fired." What happened was that I was talking, over an instant messenger, about Jackie Chan Adventures, the Jackie Chan cartoon show. And, naturally, this friend of mine (who had been following the guys since the GameSpot days) linked me to the Jackie Chan in Fists of Fire Quick Look.

I couldn't believe it. What kind of website made videos that "long" (though, in retrospect, it's only about 19 minutes long, which is short by modern Quick Look standards) about insane games like that, and with genuinely great dialog over it? And as I delved deeper into everything that Giant Bomb, I slowly, but surely got hooked. But it wasn't until the Quick Look for Wipeout: The Game that I was really hooked. And this was due, in no small part, to the recently departed Ryan Davis.

At this point everyone has said what a great guy Ryan is, but I never met him. I never went to PAX, E3, or any other event where he could have been. The only time Ryan ever acknowledged my existence was when I commented on an I Love Mondays video. It was this one, actually. I made a comment about how George Washington wasn't a Democrat, and that he didn't sound like a woman (as he does in the video, which you may want to watch now if you never did, for context). Ryan responded by agreeing about the Democrat bit, but that we have no way of knowing how George Washington sounded.

So I won't just repeat what everyone else has said about what a great guy he was, er, is. I don't want to make this religious, but there had better be some sort of afterlife where Ryan gets to play Saints Row IV, because damn, aside from the fact that he is dead, the idea of him never playing that game sounds like one of the worst things imaginable.

I dunno. Maybe I sound like a crazy person for saying that.

Anyway, the point I was trying to get to is how Giant Bomb went from being something I barely knew anything about to being one of the mainstays in how I spent my free time. I was in college back in 2010, and I usually left my video game stuff at home to keep me occupied when school was out. As such, I spent more and more time watching Giant Bomb videos, and talking about goofy stuff on the forums. Listening to the Bombcast, watching TNT every week. Watching EVERY Quick Look, no matter how uninterested in the game I was.

Granted, none of this is SOLELY because of Ryan Davis, but he was kind of the most, to use a bad pun, bombastic of the group. I didn't watch either of the Deadly Premonition Endurance Runs when they first aired because a friend and I (same one from the Jackie Chan conversation) were trying to play through it ourselves. But once we eventually got through it, I had to go through and watch them. And to decide which one to watch first, I watched the last episode to see who was the most "into it," and it felt like it was Ryan.

The enthusiasm that Ryan had when he really liked something was...Well, I don't have to explain it. If you're this deep into a blog about him written by me of all people, then you already know.

But I was devastated when I saw that Ryan had passed way. Aside from the occasional absences, Ryan had been in something that I had watched or listened to for every week of my life for the last three years. And now he's gone. I wish I had the artistic skills to make some sort of rad tribute art, or the video editing skills to make a slick tribute video, but I don't.

All I have is the respect and love for a man that I never met, but I wish more than almost anything else that I had, if only just for a minute. And I should say, a man I had so much admiration for that I have remembered that one comment he made to me on that stupid video. I don't even remember anything else from that week of Giant Bomb content, just that one moment where Ryan thought something I said was worth responding to.

Rest in peace, Ryan Davis. You're a hero of mine for living your life the way you wanted to, and for finding a way to do what you love for a living.

Bye Ryan.

It started like any other day. My dad went off to work somewhere doing something, and I stayed at home and did nothing. Like any good recent college graduate, I was unemployed and still living with my dad. It was the day that Microsoft was going to announce their new console, and I was as excited as an alligator being released from a New York apartment into the sewers. What Microsoft showed was about as exciting as watching snails dry, but at least the Giant Bomb commentary was good. When it ended, the thought of a new game from Remedy reminded me that I had never played Alan Wake, and as luck would have it, the game, it's DLC, and Alan Wake's American Nightmare were on sale that week.

But without a computer that could play games, my options were limited to Xbox Live. Five dollars was a price I couldn't resist for the game itself, but I was leary about the DLC. Because of the brilliance of Microsoft Points, I would have to pay $15 for $11 of content (that of course would be way cheaper on the PC) and then be stuck with four dollars on my account for the rest of time. After putting in a lot of thought and decision making, I flipped a coin and decided to play the main game first, and then decide later.

I started playing and quickly found myself drawn into the game. Alan Wake was a writer. Not a lowly unsuccessful one like me, he was famous. He was the ideal that people like me aspire to be. Rich, famous, handsome, having a beautiful non-trophy wife, and able to wear a suit jacket over a sweatshirt without sweating, and making it look nice. And the entire game is framed with narration from Alan, almost like what he would write in one of his novels. Explicitly that way.

And so I played on, enthralled all the way. It was a story of mystery, intrigue, twists, deception, and Barry Wheeler. Yes, some of the twists were silly, and the combat, while initially fun, began to drag on near the end of the game, but I wanted more. The ending wasn't satisfying. There's a difference between leaving things open for interpretation and intentionally creating a bad ending to keep people wanting to come back, but I didn't care that this was firmly on the bad ending side. So, I paid Microsoft and I downloaded the DLC. And American Nightmare, and I started playing.

But like a pudding cup of sorrow, the DLC, while sweet, was over before I knew it, and I still felt like I needed more. But then someone gave me a copy of Dead Space 3, so I played that. But when that was over, I went back. Well, not back so much as to Alan Wake's American Nightmare.

And it was...interesting. It wasn't the same game as before. There was a higher emphasis on action. Revolvers and shotguns were replaced with uzis and assault rifles. Flashlights now HAD to be focused to force the darkness off enemies, but they recharged in less than a second. All the tension was gone, and in its place was a sad shell of an okay action game.

Not even the narration was the same. Alan would still read his manuscript pages, but now the fake Rod Serling from Night Springs narrated. And like Shemp from The Three Stooges, this guy was acceptable, but nowhere near as good as Curly, er, Alan narrating. The voice was evocative, but not enough. He lacked the certain charm that the real deal had, and I didn't like it. Alan, meanwhile, had one of the best voices in games. Not Nolan North or Troy Baker good, but close.

If it weren't for the glorious FMV, and something resembling closure, I would be tempted to call American Nightmare outright bad. But as it is, it's decent. But not the Alan Wake I wanted.

Okay, I'll admit that wasn't my best attempt at spinning a yarn, but the original idea was way sappier and didn't have things like "pudding cup of sorrow." I'll stop now. Alan Wake and I may share being writers (never mind that Alan isn't real), but I can't duplicate his style. Not without putting more thought into it, at least.

So, after playing through all that Alan Wake stuff, I finally got around to playing Metal Gear Rising: REVENGEANCE. The game's not perfect, but MAN DO I LOVE IT!

See, the way I see it, there are three different ways to enjoy most Metal Gear games. There's enjoying them for the game play, enjoying them for the story, and enjoying them for the ridiculousness. And in REVENGEANCE, Platinum Games replaced stealthing with hectic melee action, and they bumped the ridiculousness not up to eleven, or even twelve. They brought it up to thirteen or fourteen.

I mean, in how many games is cutting open enemies and crushing their electric spines to gather electrolytes and repair paste a CORE mechanic? NONE! And on top of that, it's true, one to one cutting. Not faked BS like in the Dead Space games where you can shoot an enemy in its hand and have the whole arm come off from the shoulder. Well, I do think that Dead Space 3 was a little better about that, but the point is the same. Most games fake dismemberment by having limbs and things disconnect at pre-determined point, but REVENGEANCE doesn't. Where Raiden's blade hits is where the cuts are. Sure, it looks a little goofy some of the time. Okay, it looks REALLY goofy some of the time, but when it's cool, it's radical.

And let me tell you what's radical: Sliding into an enemy which knocks him into the air, and then whilst sliding, going into Blade Mode (which slows time), cutting him in half, and then grabbing that energy spine out of air and CRUSHING IT!

If you know me, you know I like things that are ridiculous and crazy. And this game is both, TO THE MAX. If you haven't played this game, and you like melee action games, then go play it. I don't really want to say anything else, because it just needs to be played to be experienced. I can sit here telling you that the combat is really fun, but of course I'm going to say that. Play it! It's rad! And crazy! And it has tons of Codec conversations, which is cool! And some stealth, because it's Metal Gear! And some typos in the subtitles! I blame 8-4! But I can't stay mad at them! Exclamation points!

That's it! Nothing else to say! I think I'll start playing Super Mario RPG tomorrow.

Oh, and hey, if you want an ebook to read, mine is a dollar, and features ample amounts of adventuring, a religion based around Batman, and a life-sized solid gold statue of RoboCop. And dragons. I'll stop shilling for it when it sells and I don't have to. US Link. UK Link.Canada Link.

It's available in other regions as well, just search for "Allegiance of Justice," and it's the one with the cover that looks like it was drawn in Microsoft Paint. It wasn't, but that was just because I used layers. I used GIMP. I think that's what it's called.

You know what else I made in GIMP? This:

All I'm saying is, give Luigi a chance!

As I continue to be unemployed, and have nothing going on (not counting the occasional odd job working with my dad), I've been able to get a good amount of video game playing in. And some other stuff too, but I'll get to that after the games.

Now, if you read my previous blog, you may be wondering why this isn't about Alan Wake. Assuming that I am correct in remembering saying something about not having finished that in the previous blog. Well, I'm waiting until after I play Alan Wake's American Nightmare before I write up that stuff. As a novelist myself (albeit one who has only sold a handful of my book), a lot of that game spoke to me on a personal level, so I'm letting that one wait for a bit.

BioShock Infinite, however, is a game that I am prepared to write about. Spoiler free, of course. Although, I feel like anyone who REALLY cared about the story in that game has already played it. Conversely, I didn't play it until last week, so I guess I'm not one to talk. Actually, I changed my mind.

SPOILERS. For BioShock Infinite.

Okay, let me say this, before I get into anything about the game. About a month and a half-ish before I played the game, I was in the chat for a live video on Giant Bomb. I don't remember what it was, or when it was exactly. But I do remember that at some point before the video actually started, I saw someone say something in the chat. This something was framed as being a spoiler for BioShock Infinite, and I assume the a-hole who did that was intentionally trying to spoil the game for people who had not played it.

However, at the time my thinking was, "Man, what that guy wrote is so dumb that it can't possibly be the actual thing in the actual game, right? He was just trolling. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to force that thing out of my mind. It was one of those things that even if I did my best to ignore it, it would pop up every once in a while, particularly after I actually started playing the game.

What the person in that chat wrote was that Father Comstock was Booker from an alternate universe.

So, I played through the whole game with that in the back of my head. That thought popping up every time something appeared that seemed like it would be a link to the two. Every time Wounded Knee was mentioned. And every time I kept telling myself that it couldn't possibly be the case. They wouldn't dare have a dumb twist like that, which was already used in the game inFAMOUS (though, I should say that the two twists are completely different in context).

But then that was the twist. And I didn't care for it. Still don't, really. At first I thought it was dumb, and not properly explained. But after beating the game I went and watched GB's video of Vinny playing through the last chunk of the game with the rest of the guys talking over it. And I mean literally right after. Well, not literally. I ate a sandwich in between. And whilst watching that I talked about some of the story stuff with a couple of my friends, and then it started to make some more sense. Now I'm at the point where I think the ending (and that twist) is "good" in the sense that it accomplished whatever goal it was that Ken Levine and company set out to accomplish, but I still don't really care for it.

Okay, enough spoilers. And enough about the story. Overall I enjoyed it, and I want to go through it again at some point.

Now I'm going to write about the game part of that video game. I know a fair number of people describe BioShock Infinite as being a game where the combat is good, but not great. Or as a game where you "slog" through the combat to get to the story stuff. But I didn't think either of those things were the case. I outright loved the game part of this game. If anything, it was probably the part of the game that I found to be most consistently enjoyable.

The story, as I said, lost me with that twist at the end. The world is fantastic, and beautiful, but there's a bit too much indoors stuff where it's easy to forget that everything is taking place on a big city floating in the sky (though I could see that being argued as an issue with the game play and/or level design). Actually, the fact that this is a city in the sky is kinda inconsequential to the game as a whole. It could have easily been a more grounded setting (yeah, I know) and still been exactly the same game (though maybe that was the point? I dunno, I'm done talking spoilers for this insane game)).

Anyway, game play! It's fun, there's a lot of variety, but it's a little easy. I played on normal, but what I heard about playing on hard (from Drew on the aforementioned GB video) is that the game gets too hard on hard. Maybe I'll try playing it on hard at some point, but probably not. While it was a little easy, the lack of extreme challenge did give me more opportunities to experiment. If the game was super hard, then I probably would have just tried to figure out whatever weapon and Vigor combo was the most efficient, and then using that all of the time.

Which isn't to say that I was always trying new things, and doing something different in every other combat encounter. I did, by the end of the game, get into a groove of mostly using the Hand Cannon as my weapon of choice. And I did really like the combo of using Bucking Bronco to lift a bunch of enemies into the air and then using Devil's Kiss to engulf them in a sea of flames. But I would be lying if I didn't say that half the appeal of using Bucking Bronco was that a horse neighing plays EVERY TIME you do it, and I think that's hilarious.

As I said about, I really loved the "world" of BioShock Infinite. All the uber-patriotic imagery, and deified Washington/Jefferson/Franklin stuff was great, but I wish there was more of it. That stuff kinda disappears for much of the game, which makes sense given the parts of town you go to, but I still would have liked to see a little more done with it, or maybe have some more of the Founding Fathers show up in statue form.

And I guess those are my pseudo-rambling thoughts on BioShock Infinite. I really loved the game, and I'm definitely going to play through it again before the summer ends.

But now that I've gotten that out of the way, it's time to get down to some SERIOUS business. Fast. And. Furious. 6.

OH MY GOD THIS MOVIE.

Movie of the year!

I couldn't believe the ending! Most excited I've been at the end of a movie in a LONG TIME.

And all over the surprise appearance of Jason Statham in the time period of Tokyo Drift. Okay, the whole movie is fantastic, but that ending got me unreasonably excited.

That's all I have to say on that though. Other than to say that you should see this movie. Now.

And now, back to video games. Specifically, Dead Space 3.

Dead Space 3 is pretty good. It's a lot like the first two, only with more filler, and too many enemies. Not too many in the sense that it's too hard (at least on normal), too many in the sense that enemies often keep pouring into a room long after I felt like that encounter should have ended. The core combat in the Dead Space games is solid, and fun, but the suspense and surprise of the encounters in the first two games is gone. In its place are rooms with vents on them that enemies WILL crawl out of, and they will keep crawling out of them. And then some more crawl out.

But like I said, the core combat is solid, and I still got a lot of enjoyment out of the game. I just think that had it been a shorter, more focused game, it probably would have been better. And I don't say that very often. I like long games. Granted, I didn't HAVE to do all of the non-co-op side missions, but I wanted those upgrade circuits. For upgrading.

The weapon crafting in the game is well done, but not really necessary. I played through most of the game with the plasma cutter, which was how I played through most of the first two games. I didn't just use the stock plasma cutter, of course. I did end up upgrading it so it was a lot more powerful, but at the end of the day it was still a plasma cutter that I could rotate the beam of.

The other weapon I ended up using (more toward the end of the game) was half "chain gun" and half shotgun. I did have something along those lines with me for most of the game, but it wasn't until the last few hours where I got it powerful and fast enough that I felt it was useful. Because of that I kinda want to go back in New Game Plus and use that thing some more, but I don't want to just yet. Maybe after I play some other stuff I'll go back and mess around with that.

Story wise, I think the game almost ventures into "so bad it's good" territory with its weird love triangle, and other goofy things. But not quite. Don't get me wrong, the voice acting in the game is good. But the villain of the game would be a better fit in a Bond video game than Dead Space. And don't misread that, I said Bond video game, the assumption being that the bar for that would be lower than a Bond movie, given that there's only really ever been one good Bond game.

And I cannot understand why the proper laser sights are turned off by default. Dead Space 2 did the same thing, and I'm sure there are tons of people who played these games without even realizing that was an option (though, that's their fault for not looking through the options). Why would anyone want a lame targeting reticle when you could have rad lasers that are actually being shot out into the environment?

Speaking of which, Dead Space 3 is a really nice looking game. Granted, a year from now we'll be into the next generation and (hopefully) the standards will have risen (you could argue that they already have, given PC games). But for now, the (colored) lighting in the game is absolutely beautiful. It was in Dead Space 2 as well, of course, but I feel like they stepped it up even more than last time.

I think that's it for what I have to say about Dead Space 3.

John Carmack, who I hear is a fan of colored lighting. Or made a game with colored lighting in it.

Almost completely random pictures aside, I have other things to say as well! I know I'm running long (even for me), so I'll keep it short-ish.

On Memorial Day (Monday of this week, for you non-Americans) my dad and I went over to my cousins' house for a cookout. And while we did normal cookout things like eating grilled foods, and watching RoboCop (forget Fast and Furious 6, now THERE'S a movie), we also went out to the backyard to attack bottles of water with swords. And, as luck would have it, my cousin had bought a new sword.

This newest one is a katana. Nothing special or fancy, he even told me that it was a cheap Chinese knock-off. But still, it looked like a katana, and it was easier to use that his other sword, which is frankly too large to be using for chopping bottles of water. And, after a while, we decided that since his aforementioned large sword and his dagger had names, that the katana needed a name as well.

Now, the way too large sword was named Steven Seagal. This is partly because the sword, like the original, is large and slow. And also because my cousin looks kinda like Steven Seagal, and I think he did it as a way to get use to stop calling him that. The dagger, on the other hand, is small and agile, and thus is named Jean-Claude Van Damme. So, we decided to use a similar process for naming the katana.

Now, Steven Seagal is often associated with Eastern martial arts, and that type of stuff. Thus, naming a western sword (I don't know the terminology, but I can tell you that the sword is a replica of one of the swords from Lord of the Rings, Aragorn's, I think) after Steven Seagal was silly. But it gave me the idea to name the katana after someone not associated with Eastern martial arts. Mark Wahlberg was of course the first thing that popped into my head. But that wasn't quite good enough. So we went with Marky Mark.

Then we thought it would be smart to spell it differnetly, as the sword is a cheap Chinese knock-off. But then we decided that "Marcy Marc" would be read as "mar-see mark," and that wasn't right. So Marky Mark it was.

This is apparently the only picture of Mark Wahlberg that comes up when you embed a picture of him from Giant Bomb. I'm a little disappointed.

Okay. Next up on my video gaming is Alan Wake's American Nightmare. Then I'm finally diving into Metal Gear Rising: REVENGEANCE. Can't wait.

Oh, and if you're looking for an electronic book to read, you should try mine. It's only a dollar. Or whatever the equivalent in your country is. It's available in these, and other markets around the world: US Link. UK Link. Canada Link.

The people who have read it tell me it's pretty good, so there's a wringing endorsement for you.

And here's Luigi. But I was running perilously low on good pictures of straight-up Luigi to use, so instead I've created a mash-up of Luigi and a shot from a game discussed in this blog. I present to you, Luigibeth.

I forgot to say that I really liked Elizabeth in that game. Fantastic character. Well voiced, well written, and great facial animation.

VIDEO GAMES! I've been playing them. And by them, I mostly mean Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. I did manage to get some time with Dust 514 in (enough at least to say everything I want to say about it), and I started playing Alan Wake today (it's on sale, go buy it if you haven't). But I haven't beaten it yet, so I shan't speak of that yet.

But I have spent a lot of time with Ni No Kuni. About 52 hours. And in those 52 hours I beat the game, though I didn't finish all of the side quests. I might go back and do that, but I'm not sure.

If you know nothing about Ni No Kuni, then here's my silly attempt to describe it in one sentence. It's basically Pokemon, except with more magic, occasional voice acting, rude Welsh-talking fairies, and an art style done up to look like Studio Ghibli (those guys who make anime movies that aren't ANIME anime like something like DBZ (which means I've never actually seen any of their movies, because I only like anime for the crazy)).

Remind me to never do that again. Or to always do that. Either way, it was refreshing to play a game that is, is many ways, really old fashioned. I mean, most games these days are short and mad-linear. And even RPGs these days are way more streamlined and modern than Ni No Kuni is. Like Skyrim. You can fast travel right off the bat in that game.

Not so in Ni No Kuni. I had to EARN the right to fast travel I had to play that game for hours and hours to get something that would be a basic thing in most games today. And it's totally understandable WHY fast travel is a basic thing in most games these days. It's because people these days are impatient. They don't want to have to work toward things, or wait for stuff. Why walk across this virtual world when you can just teleport across? Why spend time working toward something when the game can just give it to you? Why wait until you get home to check the internet when you can just walk around like an idiot with your face in a phone the entire time?

Okay, I got a little off topic there. But the point I was trying to make is that Ni No Kuni is a rewarding game in a lot of ways. It makes you work toward your rewards, and when you finally get them, it feels great. When I got the ability to fast travel, it felt like a fantastic reward that I had earned. When I acquired my own wyvern (or dragon, as the game incorrectly calls it) and was able to fly freely around the world, it was amazing. The thrill of soaring through the air was way more thrilling than it really should have been given the rather lackluster way that the game presents said flying around the world (it's the same overworld thing as when you're walking around on the ground).

This is a much better vision of wyvern flying than what you normally see in the game.

Conversely, I really like the look of that wyvern. And really most of the game. Or at least all the characters/monsters. For whatever reason, all of those things are cell-shaded and done up to look like the aforementioned Studio Ghibli stuff (there are even a handful of fully animated 2D cut-scenes), but the environments aren't. Someone in a forum somewhere said that's what the Studio Ghibli thing is, to have characters that "pop out" from the world around them. My counter argument is that instead it makes the world around the characters look bland and boring, and I think it'd be a way better looking game if it was all cell-shaded.

But whatever, the stuff that is cell-shaded looks fantastic, and I wish that more games would be cell-shaded these days. Cell-shaded stuff used to look real blocky and kinda cruddy back in the day (well, everything did, I guess). But I think now we've gotten to the point where it can really look incredible if the time and attention to detail is put into it, like this game.

And there was definitely a lot of craft put into it, given the hundreds of different monsters in this game. Like I said earlier, this game is basically Pokemon, only less consistent about when you can try to catch them (which was rather irksome a few times). Instead of always being able to throw Poke Balls at the enemies once you've hurt 'em up good, here you have to defeat one and hope that the game decides that you can catch it. At least from that point you WILL catch it if you want it, so that's nice.

After you catch a new monster (well, I guess I should be calling them familiars like the game does, but I never really liked that term in that use) the game forces you to name it, unlike Pokemon where I never named a single one of my Pokemon. But Ni No Kuni gives you suggestions for the names, and they're almost always brilliant. Out of all the ones that I saw though, I think Dinomight and Tyke Myson were my favorites. I'm not joking, Tyke Myson is a suggested name for the Tyke type monsters in the game. It cracked me up every time.

As always, it doesn't take long for the pictures I embed to get way off topic.

But having all sorts of monsters at your disposal wouldn't be anything great if the combat was lousy. But I'm happy to say it's pretty fun. Not perfect. I do wish that I could still retain control over character movement after issuing the "attack" command, rather than watching the character's often not great pathing get it stuck behind a different enemy, or a team mate. But aside from that, I enjoyed the combat, and thought it provided enough of a challenge, but not too much.

The story is pretty good too. I know it starts off cliched (BOY WHO WILL SAVE THE WORLD), and there's a certain level of cliche that sticks through to the end, but as a "published" author who is working on his second book, let me tell you that writing lengthy stories without falling back on a cliche or two is hard.

But really the thing that helps keep the story afloat for me are the characters. By which I really mean Lord High Lord of the Fairies, Drippy. If you've seen GB's Quick Look of the game, then you know how great he is, both in voice and writing. And while the game isn't fully voiced (by biggest criticism with the game), the writing shines through the lack of voice so that Drippy's lines are always filled with the same Welsh (at least I think it's Welsh) flavour. I only put the U there because I thought it was a funny joke. Or a joke, at least.

Hm... What else should I say about Ni No Kuni? If you're at all interested in RPGs, things that look cute in a goofy way, wyverns, or feeling rewarded for accomplishing things, you should play this game. It's well worth your time, and your money. I know it took me 52 hours, but I know others have beaten it in less (like 40-ish) if you don't have as much time. Still, if you have a PS3 and like RPGs, PLAY THIS GAME!

Drippy is now one of my favorite video game characters of all time. He's truly great.

Oh, and I played Dust 514 too. Not a ton. Couple hours worth, probably. But I had played some of the beta, so I had a bunch of ISK and skill points that had built up (somehow) from that. But of course I had to waste a bunch of skill points by not reading clearly. Oh well.

Okay, now here's my one sentence description of Dust 514. It's like Battlefield, only in space, heavily privatized, and kinda mediocre. There's definitely fun to be had in the game. Blowing up enemy tanks is fun, and the vehicle physics are just crazy enough to allow for some stupidity. But while I love how huge some of the maps are, I also feels like there aren't enough people on the maps because the player limit is too low (32, I think (that's total, it's 16 vs. 16)).

I also really like that aside from the standard gear, you have to buy everything, and keep stocked in everything. Sure, it's a money sink, but I think it fits in with the EVE vibe perfectly, and I think it's funny that you could spend all sorts of money on something and then lose it all because you died too much. I think it's less funny that you could spend all sorts of REAL money on that, but whatever. That's the price you pay for having the game be free.

I did join the GB community Corp, Kite Co. Couriers. I recommend joining if you think about playing the game. Why? I dunno, why not?

I'll probably play some more at some point, but probably not in the next couple of days. I still have Alan Wake to beat, and my copy of BioShock Infinite arrived today (it has a fully color manual!). My copy of REVENGEANCE should arrive soon, largely because I canceled that previous order, and then reordered it from Amazon proper. I just couldn't wait anymore when I was able to order a different game and have it arrive before I even heard if the first game was in stock from that seller.

Or in other words, my advice is that if you're buying something on Amazon, you're probably better off paying a slightly higher price and buying it from Amazon itself, rather than some other company on the Amazon website. I'm sure that works fine most of the time, but in this case, not so much.

This is a much better game with Dust in the title. I think it's supposed to go on Steam soon. If you didn't play it on 360 because you don't have one (cough, @cjduke, cough), you should play it there.

That's about it for interesting stuff going on in my life. I saw Star Trek Into Darkness, and liked it a lot. While I agree that the movie isn't very Star Trek-y, I disagree with the notion that it isn't Star Trek at all (which I know Ryan Davis said on this week's Bombcast, I think in reference to both JJ Abrams Star Trek films).

When I think of Star Trek, specifically for The Original Series, the first thing that comes to mind are the characters. And this is because everything else about the show has aged horribly. The special effects are laughable, the "science" is suspect at best, and a lot of the plots are really corny (and probably were back then too). But the characters stand the test of time. Watching Kirk, Spock, and Bones go back and forth after a mission is still immensely enjoyable to this day.

I think the new Star Trek films nail that perfectly. Especially Karl Urban as Bones. He channels Deforest Kelley so perfectly that I swear he must have eaten Deforest Kelley's ghost to gain his power, or something along those lines. He just nails it EVERY SINGLE TIME!

Also, rest in peace, Deforest Kelley.

Oh, and I decided to start linking to my book in all my blogs. Feel free to stop me, mods, if this is considered advertising. It's only a dollar, or the equivalent for your region of choice.

US Link. UK Link. Canada Link. Nintendo Link.

Speaking of which, here's Luigi.

It had been a while since I used a picture of Luigi from something resembling a video game, rather than an actor portraying him. Speaking of which, I watched the Super Mario Bros. movie the other day. On VHS. I can't call that movie good, but it makes me laugh every time I see it. I think it's hilarious.

Ever since the reveal of the MGSV trailer earlier this year, I've had a crazy desire for some Metal Gear action. At first I thought that reliving the stories of some of the games would satisfy this urge. So, I spent a Sunday afternoon watching a five and a half hour long video on YouTube that was all of the cutscenes and important Codec conversations in MGS2. But that didn't do it, so the following Sunday I watched all of MGS3's cutscenes (about five hours long). Then I watched all of Portable Ops' (that was much shorter, only about an hour and forty minutes).

But then I realized that I needed to actually play one of them, so once I got back from college (oh, I graduated, so yay?) I downloaded Peace Walker HD on my PS3. It was on sale. And, in the time since, I beat it.

I should say that this was not the first time that I had played Peace Walker. I played the game back on the PSP in 2010 when the game was originally released. And including all the side missions, and replaying things, I put about 67 hours into that game. I played a whole lot of that game back then, in spite of its control issues (having to aim with the face buttons).

And when I played the PS3 version, I ended up stopping after putting in about 35 more hours. Now, I know what you're thinking, that I just Transfarred my save over and went with that. Well, you'd be wrong, and that's because you can't get Trophies with a Transfarred save that was created on a PSP or on another PSN account. And I wanted to go through the game again anyway, to prevent it from being too easy because of all my high level gear.

But the game ended up being a lot easier than I expected anyway, at least in the main story stuff. I'm not sure if that's because the game was altered to make it easier (I doubt that), or if it's because of the greatly increased ability to control the game with a proper controller instead of a PSP. That definitely has something to do with it.

So, as you can guess from my putting another 35 hours into a game that I had already played so much, I really like this game. It has that solid (pardon the pun) core stealthing game play, and around that is basically XCOM light. Recruit soldiers, research projects, etc. And the amount of different weapons, different types of gear (again, pun), and other odd items is pretty crazy, though some of the crazier ones are reserved for multiplayer, like a gun that turns someone else invisible, or a cardboard box tank where one player "drives," and the other aims the turret.

I still haven't played any multiplayer, though I do know a guy who says he'll play the PS3 version at some point and that we can play co-op then. Although, while he claims to be a fan of the series, he still hasn't played MGS4, and I'm pretty sure he bought his copy back in 2008. While he'd never admit it, he's a total over-achiever who never manages to get things like that done (he's had my copy of Uncharted 2 on loan for a while, and he still hasn't finished reading the book I wrote). He's also probably reading this, so I'll end this paragraph by saying that I don't hold his lack of having time for these things against him. And that I want my copy of Uncharted 2 back. It's not as good as Uncharted 3, but it's still a great game, and I want my "collection" of PS3 games all back in one place by the time the PS4 comes out.

But I've gotten off topic.

I know, Diddy, I can't believe he hasn't played MGS4 yet either.

Peace Walker! It's still a rad game, though playing the PS3 version makes me wish it had been made as a console game from the very beginning. Even if it was a budget downloadable game, that still would have been better. I don't mind the low res textures and low polygon characters/environments (though they were pretty slick by PSP standards). It's the size of the environments that I wish was different. They're just too small. There aren't ever enough guards in any one area for sneaking through to ever be a real challenge. And it doesn't help that everyone in the game has awful eyesight.

I realize that having enemy guards that behave and act one hundred percent realistically would be hard to do technically (especially on the PSP), and might make the game too hard, but I think Peace Walker veers too far in the other direction. And, so far as I can tell, there's no way to adjust the difficulty. And as a result, I breezed through all of the stealth parts of the game, and never had much trouble in the bosses. At least the ones you have to play.

Because some of the side mission bosses still feel like they are balanced for mutiplayer, and multiplayer only. I did manage to beat most of them (including all of the Monster Hunter bosses) on the PSP version, but that was because I spent 67 hours grinding to get the best rocket launchers. Okay, that's a BIT of an exaggeration, but not much. And as much as I'd like to get that Trophy for hunting all of the Monsters in the game, that last battle against Gear Rex on Mother Base is just too much, and I don't feel like spending another thirty hours with this game. I already did that once, and it's a shame that I can't get Trophies for things I've already done, but I understand why it works that way (preventing Trophy fraud).

But I did Transfar my save over. I had to charge my PSP for a decent chunk of time to get it to stay on long enough for that, and it'll probably be the last time I ever use the darn thing. But I can not think of a better way to send the ole PSP out to pasture.

So that's about it on my thoughts on Peace Walker. If you're a fan of the MGS series, well, then you've probably found a way to play Peace Walker by now. If you're not, well, it might be a decent place to start. Well, no. Don't start with Peace Walker. I don't know what to say to people who aren't MGS fans, but would like to jump into the series. The first few games just aren't much fun to play. Even back in the day, they were really clunky. So, I guess I'd suggest watching all the cutscenes of them on YouTube (starting with Twin Snakes, because as I've said before, if you have never played the PS1 version, Twin Snakes is the way to go, because you have nothing to compare it to, and you won't think the voice acting isn't as good, cutscenes too action-y, etc (also, it looks nicer, even if it is dated by modern standards)). Then play MGS4. Then Peace Walker. Or just don't get involved in the series.

I really hope that MGSV has a lot of the base building type stuff from Peace Walker, especially if you can actually walk around the base and talk with people. As cool as building up Mother Base is in Peace Walker, never having more than that bird's eye view for most of the game was a little disappointing, though understandable given the limitations of the PSP. But really, for MGSV I'll just be satisfied if the "open world" Kojima is claiming it'll have is a fully realized and well used game world. Actually, I'll just be satisfied if it's a quality Metal Gear experience.

In other news, I started playing Ni No Kuni today. I'm about seven and a half hours in, so I shan't talk about that yet. I've also ordered Metal Gear Rising: REVENGEANCE on Amazon, and I have a code for Super Mario RPG that I got on Club Nintendo (if you have the points, go get that game). I'll be writing about all these games once I feel like I've played enough of each to talk on them.

So, that's it. Out of college now, still no job. No job in sight, either. If my book would sell, then I could at least feel like I was contributing slightly to the income of this household (myself and my dad), but complaining here won't get the sales I need. Maybe one or two of you will take pity on me and buy a copy, and I'm grateful if you do, but that's just small potatoes.

Maybe the sequel will sell better. From what a couple of my friends tell me from reading the early parts of it, they say it's better than the first, so there's that. It won't be ready for public consumption for a while though. I'd say several months at the earliest. I'll keep you guys posted.

And, since it's still the Year of Luigi, here's Luigi. The original idea was to go with a picture of Luigi being stealthy (because of MGS), but instead here's John Leguizamo as Luigi, because I think someone on the GB crew was talking about that movie recently. I still think that movie is hilarious. I haven't seen it in about ten years though.

Alrighty, so, this last weekend I went home, and despite very strong urges to do something stupid like download Amy for $2, or buy MGS: Peace Walker HD (which would be dumb because I already own that on PSP, but I'll get that eventually), I instead downloaded Guacamelee! And in between things like going to a funeral for a guy I never knew (who apparently looked like a Puerto Rican Abe Lincoln (despite being a white guy) (I'm not joking, he DJ'd as Abe Lincoln, complete with a stovepipe hat, I was told)) and going to a birthday party where a bunch of "Russians" (who are really from Georgia, but we all call them "The Russians") were talking about the benefits of flying first/business class and giving inside secrets of the pharmaceutical industry, I managed to play through all of Guacamelee.

Also, I think that may be one of the longest and weirdest sentences that I have ever written. Hm. Anyway, Guacamelee! That game is quite excellent, but not without flaws. If you have absolutely no idea what Guacamelee is, then you should watch GB's Quick Look (though, really, if you're here and reading this, I think the chances of knowing nothing about this game are extremely low, so I don't even know why I bothered linking to that).

Or, if you're short on time, I could just describe it as a Luchador themed Metroidvania. And, as stated above, it is an excellent one of those. The game play is tightly focused and toned just like any good Luchador, and I mean that both for the platforming and the combat. This is important, as the game features ample amounts of both. In fact, the game has a large number of "arenas" where it blocks off the exits to the room and forces you to defeat a bunch of enemies before you can proceed. Really, they feel a lot like they are there just to pad out the game, but the combat is so much fun that not only do I not mind them, I'm glad they're there, because I want more of that wonderful combat.

It's pretty simple to start off, as at the beginning of the game pretty much all you have are a few basic attacks. There's a three hit combo, an upper cut, and a downward air attack called a "Downer-Cut." But as the game progresses, Juan (the main character) gains new attacks that allow him to break different colored blocks in the world to access new areas. But they add a large amount of depth to the combat, especially later in the game when he have enough stamina to combo them together one after another.

And this is not a game where you can just use the one three hit combo to beat it. Not that the game gets especially difficult on Normal (though it does get tricky, especially on Hard). This is because later in the game there are enemies with colored shields that can only be broken by specific special moves. Color coding like that might be troublesome to the color-blinded out there, but I don't know for sure, as I am not a person of color-blindness. At first I thought the colored shields were a bit of a gimmick, but I ended up liking fighting the guys with the shields, because like I said, it forces you to change up your tactics.

Another added wrinkle to the combat is that the game has two different "worlds" that you can be in at any time, the world of the living, and the world of the dead. Part way into the game you get the ability to switch between the two at any time, so of course this leads to some Ikaruga style mid combat switching to get at enemies that you can't otherwise. Okay, I admit that Ikaruga gave you a damage bonus for changing polarity, it wasn't a case of doing no damage, but what am I supposed to reference, Outland?

Here's a video I found that has nothing to do with Guacamelee, outside of Luchadors.

And the platforming in Guacamelee is excellent as well. Remember that world switching that I mentioned not too long ago? No? Well, you need to get your brain checked out then, because you have some serious memory issues.

But that plays into the platforming as well, as there are objects in the world that only exist in one world, or the other. At first this is as simple as switching to make platforms become solid so that you can land your jump, but later on you are doing things like switching multiple times in mid jump while wall jumping to avoid spikes, and it gets VERY tricky. But thankfully the controls are fantastic, and aside from my L2 button on my controller being a little worn out (because it's a PS3 controller), it's all very responsive. And even with the L2 button, I never felt like it was really THAT hampering. Just ever so slightly.

I also really like most of the art and music in the game. Some of the music is definitely very "HEY, THIS IS SOME MEXICAN-ASS MEXICAN MUSIC," and I think that stuff is hilarious (especially the "You just got a new power" music). But a lot of it manages to have that Mexican feel without sounding like parody, which I think is impressive, given that this game was made in Canada.

The art is good too. Except for all the dumb references in the background stuff. But none of that got in the way, so I'm not going to talk about it beyond that.

What did get in the way, and is really my only complaint (other than wishing the game was longer, though I think it's a good value for the price) is the technical problems with the game. The game runs well, I never had any frame rate troubles. But every once in a while the scripting would break, and I would have to pause the game, back out to the main menu, and restart from the last time the game saved.

This happened during cut-scenes three or four times. What was worse was the time (when I was playing on hard) right after I beat a boss. Now, on the one hand, I was enjoying that because the boss was changed in more than just having more health, as the arena was slightly different, and the boss had new moves. What I didn't like was how the game froze in the cut-scene after, and I had to go through the whole boss again. That made me upset.

And there was another time when I grabbed an enemy near the top of the screen, and went to do a suplex, but the enemy ended up getting stuck off screen. The problem was that I had to defeat all the enemies to proceed, but that one could never die, and I was stuck. So I reloaded, and the problem didn't happen the next time. But it was still unfortunate.

I also wish the game had voice acting, but that's not a big deal.

Here's an actual screen shot. But now that I look at it, I just realized that this is from an old build that features a different UI, including a button prompt for a 360 controller. Oh well, too bad, I already inserted it.

So, that's been it for my video game playing. In a couple weeks I'll be graduating from college, and hopefully then I'll get a chance to play stuff like Metal Gear Rising: REVENGEANCE, BioShock Infinite, and the Deadly Premonition Director's Cut that should be available by then. And I'll probably go and Platinum Guacamelee, because I'm two Trophies short.

Oh, and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. I'll play that too. And I'll probably download Peace Walker HD, because I have no self control.

And Ni No Kuni. I actually own a copy of that, but I didn't want to get 10 hours in and then not play it for three weeks.

And here's Luigi, in wrestling form.