Despite what you may think, Destiny was NOT the only game I played in September! I actually managed to play most (but not all) of this month's PlayStation Plus titles as well! Why not all of them? Well, anything that's Vita only is unplayable to me, which is a bummer, because I totally would have played Joe Danger if the PS3 version was free. Well, it probably was at some point before I had PS+, but there's nothing to be done about that.

Oh, somewhat related, but I recently re-upped my PS+ for another year, which means I'm going to commit to monthly blogs covering all the PS+ games for the foreseeable future. Really though I paid for another year so I can keep playing Destiny online. Anyway, on to the games!

Well, one minor note first. I didn't really play Sports Friends either. I had wanted to, but have yet to have an opportunity to play it with someone. I did turn it on, and mess around in the menus, and put in some codes I found online to unlock different announcer voices and a Pong game type thing, but like I said, I didn't actually play it.

This month's pretty light compared to some of the other ones, actually, so don't be surprised if this blog is shorter than the ones I usually write. Of course, I could go back and edit these couple of sentences to make sense after finishing the blog, but why would I do something sensible like that?

Velocity 2X

This is one of those games that very quickly went from "I know nothing about this game" to "hey, this game is pretty rad" when I started playing it. Well, that's not completely true, because I did watch the Quick Look where Dan played the game without paying attention to the tutorials (or just skipping them completely) before playing the game.

The premise of the game is that some future lady testing an experimental gets lost in space, like the classic TV show Farscape, and then she has to fly around and do stuff. Really, the story is flimsy, and presented in the "classic video game style" of still images with text. Though, it is a more fleshed out and explained story than in Destiny, not that that's saying much. There's no voice acting either, which I don't mind given that I was mostly just skimming past what little dialog and story there is in the game. Though, I was a bit upset that the (somewhat short) game ends on a cliffhanger, but it was free, so I won't complain.

Really, if I was to complain, it would be that the game only took me a few hours to complete, because I was having an absolutely blast with it. The levels in the game switch between two different styles of play, one which is a traditional looking top down scrolling space ship shooter, and the other which is an on foot side scroller where she gets out of the ship. That's something that I'm kinda surprised more games don't do, have part of it be in vehicle, and part on foot. I mean, for these 2D smaller scale games, obviously there's plenty of AAA stuff that does that.

Though, that's probably a budget and/or design issue, where you kinda have to design two very different games and make both of them good, rather than just focusing on one. But, in the case of Velocity 2X, both ARE very good, and that extra variety was really nice. Which isn't to say that there's no similarities between the two, because there are. Some of it is superficial stuff like both having collectibles, but the game's core principle of "velocity" is there in both.

Generally speaking, this isn't a game that you "have" to play quickly, but it's a game that feels best when you are moving through it at top speed. Especially in the on foot sections, if you can get into a groove and move through them quickly, the game is fantastic. And the levels were very clearly built with maintaining a "flow" through them in mind, because the developers knew they were making that type of game.

Mostly, at least. Later in the game there's a heavier and heavier focus on placing teleportation pods in spots (both on foot and in ship) and then teleport back to go down alternate routes. In the on foot parts, you can pretty much go wherever (though, like I said, the game is at its best if you are constantly moving and getting into the flow of it), but the ship parts are constantly scrolling up. Slowly, normally, but there is a boost to make it go a lot faster. Anyway, the later levels involve a lot of going back and going through alternate routes, and then going back down the original routes after some other routes have been opened up, etc. Luckily the game done a little blue flashy thing on the screen when you get to a spot where you should drop a pod, so it's not just complete guesswork.

Overall I did like that teleporting stuff, but in a few cases it did leave me staring at a map for a fair amount trying to figure out where to go next. Not that that's a bad thing, it just felt a little out of place in a game that is primarily about moving, and moving quickly.

It's a fun game. If you have a PS4 or a Vita, and have PS+ (and really, why wouldn't you?), and you haven't played it yet, then I suggest you download it now before Sony swaps out the free PS+ games for next month's. It won't last you very long, but it'll be fun while it lasts.

Though, I will say that while most of the game's fun little gimmicks and abilities are fun to use, there were two that I didn't care for. The first one is in the Quick Look, and it's the throwing the teleportation pods thing. Not that I don't like the concept, but the process of stopping and aiming them wasn't fun. And there's a couple spots later in the game where you need to throw one of those, teleport to it while it is still midair, and then do a jump-y dash-y thing and avoid hitting a thingy that'll kill you. The other doesn't show up until the last couple of levels, and I don't really want to spoil it, so all I'll say is that it reminded me of Brothers (which I did not like) in the worst possible way. Not that it ruins the last couple of levels, but it doesn't really help them.

Judgment: Very fun, highly recommended. Too short though.

I did tweet a few screenshots of this at some point, but at this point it'd be buried beneath a sea of Destiny ones in my Twitter thingy, so I didn't even bother, this is just a GB one from the wiki.

Hoard.

If I described Hoard as a dragon simulator where you roam the countryside burning villages and stealing princesses to ransom them off for gold (no joke, the game uses the word ransom), you would think Hoard sounds amazing. But then I'd tell you that it's a small indie game with modest production values that's focused on multiplayer. But, unlike Sports Friends, I was at least about to play enough of this game to be able to write a little bit about it.

It's okay.

Playing against the AI was kinda boring, so I didn't really play much beyond the tutorial. And like with Sports Friends, I didn't have anyone to play with locally. I don't know off hand if it has online multiplayer or not, but even if it does, I doubt many people are playing. Even with it being PS+. And yes, I know I probably should have gone back and checked before writing this, but I already covered the most important part, which is that dragons kidnap princesses with the sole intention of ransoming them off for money.

And that's pretty cool. There is a fair amount of depth to stuff, like having to protect the princess, looking for power ups, attacking the other dragons, etc, but like I said, I didn't really play much of it.

Judgment: It's all right, probably pretty fun if you have people to play with. I doubt I'll ever play it again.

PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale.

I love Super Smash Bros. From the original on the N64 to Melee on the GameCube, and then Brawl on the Wii, I've played countless hours of these games. The Wii U version (coming "Holiday 2014" (January 2015)) is one of the reasons why I got a Wii U. I absolutely love these games, and playing them is an absolutely blast.

PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale is a bad game, a shameless rip off, and I feel sorry for people that paid full price for it.

Okay, I'm being a little harsh. Like with the previous game here, I didn't have a chance to play it with other people, I'm sure it's a lot more enjoyable in that context. Actually, I'm not sure, because the basic act of playing the game didn't really feel good. Maybe that's just because it doesn't play exactly like Smash Bros, and I kept trying to do things like smash attacks that aren't in this game, or maybe it's because it is just a bad game, I'm not really sure. I didn't play a ton of this game before I decided that I never wanted to play it again.

To be precise, I played through the tutorial, and then played through the arcade mode (or whatever it was called, I don't remember the specific name off hand) as Raiden (from Metal Gear Risigng: REVENGEANCE), and then I stopped. Didn't even want to try other characters to see if I enjoyed them more. The game just wasn't fun to play.

Part of that is how the scoring system works. You don't win in this game by reducing your opponent's health bar to zero like in a traditional fighting game, instead you're scored on kills (not KOs like in Smash Bros). And you get kills by filling a super meter and then using a super on your enemies. There's three different supers for each character, depending on how much meter you have, and if you hit someone with a super, it's a kill. That's it.

Contrast that with Smash Bros and its damage system. In Smash Bros, when you attack someone, you raise that character's damage percentage. The higher the percentage, the further that character flies when attacked, with it eventually being so far that it's nigh impossible to recover (like the 300% sudden deaths). The goal is to knock opponents off the level, in any direction. For as simple a mechanic as that is in Smash Bros, it feels incredibly deep and nuanced compared to PlayStation All Stars where getting hit with a super means you die, no matter what.

And apart from not being fun to play, the game just feels kinda lifeless, and like it was stitched together haphazardly. Part of that is in the levels. In the Smash Bros games, most of the levels are based on the games from the series. This is true in PlayStation All Stars too, but in this game, most (if not all) of the levels seem to be combinations of ideas or areas from multiple games, but with no rhyme or reason as to how these were combinations were decided upon. Why does the Parappa the Rapper stage turn into Killzone at the end? Why does the Buzz Quiz guy show up in the LittleBigPlanet level? Some make some semblance of sense, like when the flying bird guy (I forget its name) from BioShock Infinite and some zeppelins attack the plane from Uncharted 3 whilst its in air. Songbird! That's the name. I think.

That's also kind of a bummer, the cast in this game. Granted, I'm no expert on the cast of characters that Sony has, but there's a lot of third party characters in this game, and not necessarily the ones that I would associate with PlayStation. Like, where's Crash Bandicoot? Where's Lara Croft? Where's that guy with the pointy hair and big sword from that Final Fantasy game? I get that there's a load of legal reasons why these characters aren't in there, but it's not really a great selection in the game. Like, there's two Coles, one good and one evil. Not that Smash Bros hasn't done the same thing (and worse, cough, Dr. Mario, cough) before (and again), but that doesn't mean it's good, or that I wish it wasn't the case. Though, for all I know, maybe the two Coles play completely differently from each other, it's not like I tried either of them.

This game's a bummer. Part of that is on me, I'll admit, for wanting the game to play exactly like Smash Bros. Really, that's this game's biggest problem. It's not similar enough to Smash Bros to work as a Smash Bros clone, and it's not different enough for it to work as its own thing. If this had played more like a traditional fighting game, I would have been able to separate the two in my mind, and maybe get some more enjoyment out of it. But as it is, I didn't enjoy the game at all, and never want to play it again.

Judgment: Disappointing in every way. Will likely never play again.

Destiny Check in!

So, a lot has happened in Destiny since last I blogged about it. The Queen's Wrath event is still going, but in a horrible move, Bungie decided to patch the game so that Queen's gear doesn't dismantle to useful mats like Ascendant Shards any more, which made that stuff useless to me. And they patched out the loot cave, which kinda made me not want to play the game.

BUT, then they announced that they were fixing the random engrams! After tomorrow's patch, engrams will no longer decrypt into engrams of lower tiers! And that made me happy! But you know what made me even happier? An attempt on the Vault of Glass!

If you don't know, the Vault of Glass is the raid in Destiny. Currently the only one, but I'm sure more will come in the expansions. Anyway, an internet friend of mine (who may or may not be reading this, but hi Nickie just in case) got together myself and a few others, and we spent a few hours on Saturday night fighting our way into the Vault. And, assuming what little we know about the Vault is correct, we got about a third of the way through. We're basing that off the "knowledge" of there being three bosses, and our defeating the first one. We did poke a little bit forward after the boss, and got to what seemed to be a stealth sequence, of all things, and decided to call it a night.

The best thing about the Vault is that it requires so much more teamwork, and "puzzle solving" (for lack of a better term) to figure out how to progress. Everything else in the game is simple. Run up to a spot and hold Square, then fight off waves of enemies. But that's not the case in the Vault. It requires teamwork, it requires that you know what to do, and be communicating with your teammates about what's going on. Playing it made me realize why Bungie made the decision to not have matchmaking for that mode. I'm still not sure that not allowing people to have a terrible time with random people was the "right" decision, but I understand why they did it, and I don't really blame them for it. And I'm going to go into a few details about some of the stuff in the Vault of Glass, so if you haven't played it and want to keep yourself pure, don't read the next couple of paragraphs. SPOILERS

Of what we've played thus far (like I said, up to the first of three bosses), it's the boss fight itself that has stuck out to me the most. See, the boss has a shield around it that is completely impenetrable to normal attacks. But, there's a relic that when wielded by one of the players can disable the shields and allow the others to attack. The relic itself is a shield, like an olde timey knight shield, and when wielded it goes into third person, like that one mission with the sword. In order to take down the shields, the player with the relic has to charge a super meter by bashing into enemies with the relic (it turns the standard attack and melee attack into a tackle that homes in a bit), and when filled, it can shoot out a burst of energy that takes down the boss's shield.

But that's not all, because once the shield is down, the boss tries to teleport, which will also restore the shield. But when it does, a circle appears somewhere in the area, and if a player stands in it, it prevents the boss from teleporting. But the longer the boss's shield is down, it summons more and more enemies, and progressively harder ones. That creates an incentive to allow the boss's shield to restore after a while, to keep the place from flooding with minotaurs (really tough enemies with their own shields (but normal ones)). But if the player with the relic can charge it again while the boss's shield is still down, the anti-shield shot can be used to do massive damage (about 4900 when I was doing it).

And I haven't even covered the concept of being marked for negation. During the fight, the boss summons "oracles" (which are basically just glowing orbs) around the area that make a musical chime when they appear (each plays a different note for each spot they can show up). If they aren't destroyed in time, they mark all the players. This is introduced before the actual boss fight, and during that part, there's a big glowing spot in the center where you can run to in order to get "cleansed." Because if you don't, then the boss does the Rite of Negation, and any marked players die (also, during a Raid there's a 30 second timer BEFORE your teammates can revive you if you're killed, which makes it tougher). But during the boss fight, the glowing spot disappears, and instead the player with the relic has to use it to cleanse all the others (and himself/herself) with a dome of cleansing around the relic that has to charge up (using the grenade cooldown thingy).

Also, if the relic is dropped for more than ten seconds or so, everyone dies.

Even if you skipped over all that, you can tell from my having to write several paragraphs about the process of fighting one boss that it's pretty complicated (and I probably forgot to mention something too). On the one hand, it's a really fantastically designed encounter that brings out the best of this game's design. But, on the other hand, it really highlights just how generic the design of most of the rest of the game is. All the other bosses in the game just involve dealing with smaller enemies while fighting the boss. There's very little, if any, strategy to them. But this boss feels like something from a Zelda game, just done in a way that requires multiple people to be doing different things at the same time. Or, as one of my friends put it when I described it to him, like a raid boss in an MMO, which is appropriate.

I get that making an entire game like this would have been difficult, but putting the only thing like this as end game content that most people won't see is kind of a bummer. I'm happy that there is something hardcore in here for people like me that have spent WAY too much time playing this game, but I just wish more of the game had been like this.

Anyway, we should be going back in for more tonight (as of when I wrote this), and I'll make another progress update in the next blog I write, which will probably be next week.

This gun has a sick spine on top of it. I don't really like using it that much, though.

Other Things?

Let's see, anything else I should mention? Well, I have a new headset mic (Turtle Beach P11, I think, I know my internet friend Krummey uses the one I bought on his PS4) and a Wii U Pro Controller coming in the mail from Amazon, as a "birthday present" from my dad. Which means I asked him if I could get that stuff with his money (since I don't have a job), he said sure, and my birthday is this week. I'm turning 24. I already feel old.

So, I'm holding off on playing more Super Mario 3D World until I get that new controller, which I'm also doing with Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. It was on sale for $30 on eShop, and I had $10 in Digital Deluxe Promotion Bucks, which meant I got the game for $20, which was a deal I couldn't refuse. That game is 11 gigs in size though, which is a lot bigger than I expected, especially after 3D World was like a gig and a half or something. Also, Shadow of Mordor is out tomorrow, which I will be purchasing and playing. In other words, I'll have plenty to write about for the near future.

Not really anything else in my life worth writing about. Did I mention last time that I finally got my driver's license? Well, if I didn't mention it, then I am now. That's about the only noteworthy thing happening. Uh...Oh, with the new mic coming, which will work on my PC, I'll probably try to get in on some stupid podcast or something that some of my internet friends/acquaintances do, so you'll all finally be able to hear what my terrible voice sounds like. Assuming that happens.

Well, that's that, so I'm...uh...going to end this without thinking of a good way to end it.

It really is The End!

Speaking of Metal Gear, don't forget that tomorrow Drew and Dan are playing the finale of Metal Gear Scanlon LIVE on the internet! I'm excited! And hopefully we'll have Metal Gear Scanlon 2: Dans of Drewberty to look forward to after this.