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Psycosis

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I Play Porn Games For The Story // 02.10.2011

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Now I know y’all be loving this shit right here! Time for another edition of the giant wall of text in which you can rather non-committingly scroll through that is my weekly blog. Here I talk about some videogames I’ve played this week, visual novels I’ve read, and maybe mashups or anime or anything that tickles me fancy really. University life can’t stop the porn game train, baby, no matter how many random flat parties I find myself at for no good reason, so let’s get started!

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Crazy Taxi

So Steam, being the evil bastards they are, decided put that Sega Dreamcast collection on sale. I bought it for two reasons, one being I have never actually played Sonic Adventure DX, and the other so I could always be a few clicks away from making some curaaaazy money.

So before we get to me saying how awesome Crazy Taxi is, I had no idea that this re-release has so many changes to it, namely two of the best parts of the game have been completely removed from the game. One being the soundtrack, replaced with some shitty shit shit music, and the other being the real life locations people want to go to. Kentucky Fried Chicken being replaced with Fried Chicken Shack is incredibly stupid. It’s almost as if this game was owned by a company that doesn’t know what its fans want!

Oh right, yeah, Sega.

At the very least, the Steam version can help with the first one. It’s surprisingly easy to replace the song files in the Steam version, so as soon as I didn’t hear YA YA YA YA YA, I quit out the game and proceeded to do just that. I managed to replace the files with the majority of the Offspring greatest hits album, since I felt that’d be the best fit. While there were Bad Religion songs in the original game, that’s like complaining I only listen to Iron Maiden and not any Sentience songs when playing Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now. In other words shut up.

So, yeah, Crazy Taxi. I can usually last 15 or so minutes in Arcade mode, but to be honest I prefer the Crazy Box mode for short bursts of gameplay. Most specifically whenever I load up the game I almost automatically go straight for the S-S track of racing around the entire city in less than 4 minutes. Guess it’s not too surprising that I prefer a throwaway time trail mode, but still, it’s a lot of fun, especially since for me in normal gameplay I hardly ever see anything past the long bridge in the middle of the city.

Gundemonium Collection

So I really had no idea what this was. But it featured anime girls so of course I bought it as soon as it was released!

Gundemonium Recollection

The first of this collection, Gundemonium Recollection, is a bullet hell, but instead of a vertical perspective it’s from the side, more akin to shoot ‘em ups. The game is definitely a bullet hell, though, which you’ll be able to tell straight away. You control one of two characters, the second character being customizable for a lot more variations, on your quest to something something something anime girls.

As almost a prerequisite for bullet hells, this game is mad hard. The game defaults to three hearts, and once you get hit three times, you’re dead. No continues. You can change that to five if you don’t care for high scores but still it’s rather challenging. You can, however, continue from the main menu on the stage you died on, but even that can get brutal in the last few levels. The characters also have bomb attacks, which differ from anime girl to anime girl. The bombs are good for dealing a decent amount of damage to everything on screen, and getting rid of all the bullets on the screen as well. On the easiest difficulty, bombs will automatically be deployed if you get hit, and of course if you have any bombs available. You get bombs by collecting them from seemingly random enemy drops, or by getting hit, each hit gives you one bomb back, which is pretty cool I guess. The REAL dick move here though, is the last few bosses actually punish you for using the bombs. One of them for instance launches what can only be approximated at as “a fuckton of shit” whenever you use a bomb, the last boss will do this and then also heal all of her health. Fuck.

Normal difficulty.
Normal difficulty.

Apart from the difficulty, it’s a pretty fun start to the collection. And while I barely managed to scrape by on normal, I really want to play the highest difficulty just so I can hate myself.

GundeadliGne

Remember the last section? Yeah this game is pretty much that! GundeadliGne is the second of this collection, and is another side perspective bullet hell. The differences between this and the previous are rather minimal all things considered.

First off, in this game you can turn around, which also means enemies can come from both the right and the left of the screen. Thankfully, at least on the difficulty I played on, the left hand side of the screen was still the best place to be, as most enemies would just fly from the right to the left as opposed to appearing right behind you and fucking you up with hella bullets. Another super small difference is the art style is slightly different, softer maybe. Though parts of it just looks like the same graphics with some kind of filter over it.

The big difference is this game has continues! I totally died like 4 stages into the normal stage, and the game popped up a continue prompt and I was all “hell YES I’m going to continue!” I have no idea how many continues there are, if there’s even a limit, but I used two and beat the game without going back to the main menu. This is in huge contrast with the previous game, in which I died and had to restart so many times I lost count. Due to this the game felt significantly easier than the previous game, but I imagine without said continues I’d be complaining. Oh well, more bullet hell goodness!

Hitogata Happa

The third and final game in this collection is actually not like the others! In actual fact, Hitogata Happa is in fact a vertical bullet hell shooter! Completely different! This game features a doll maker who something something anime girls. You start the first level with 9 copies of the most basic doll, who doesn’t have that much maneuverability. The first stage continues in a rather basic bullet hell fashion, enemies come down and shoot, if they don’t die they fly away, and then suddenly boss. The boss is on a timer and if you don’t beat the boss within the time limit, all your remaining dolls, which act as lives (also it’s one hit kill), disappear and the boss starts spouting a barrage of bullets at you, making it almost impossible to beat. And even better, even if you shoot the boss for the entire time limit, it won’t even be at half health by the time the time limit ticks down to zero.

The interesting mechanic here is that each doll can explode. After a set amount of time alive, the doll has the ability to explode on contact with an enemy. This sacrifices the doll, and therefore a life, but as a payoff it does monumental damage to the enemy, and thus is the only way to actually beat the bosses in the game. This can be incredibly annoying as the bomb only works if you actually hit the boss with the doll, not if the doll is hit by a bullet. This forces you to try and navigate the maze of bullets all the way up to the boss’s body to deal the damage, and trust me when I say if a boss shoots a bullet at you when you are just pixels away from hitting it, it can be mad frustrating.

Another big part of this game is the dolls. During each level you collect gems from destroyed enemies. At the end of each level these gems are used to buy more dolls. There are 8 dolls total that you can buy, and you can buy up to 12 of each. Every time you buy one type of doll, the cost of that doll goes up, meaning it’s preferable to jump between different dolls over the course of the game. Each doll has different abilities, for instance the default on from the first mission can slow down time, one of them shoots lasers, one homing missiles, and stuff like that. I eventually found myself just using one kind of doll for the majority of the game, due to me preferring spread shots as opposed to straight shots, which meant the cost for that one doll was extravagant by the end, I could only get two or three. Fortunately, if you continue the game from the main menu, the costs revert back to the start. However, the amount of gems can really hinder you when continuing, so watch out for that I guess.

Overall this is a fun game, and a lot different to the previous two in the collection, which is kind of a relief after playing all three back to back to back. A great collection for people who love bullet hells and hate themselves!

Then again hating yourself is pretty much a prerequisite for loving bullet hells.

Fighting Games

Everyone’s favourite Rmanthorp is surprisingly kinda a big deal. He hosts a videogame club for geeks and nerds like himself every Thursday, running from half 7 ‘til midnight, confined to a corner of his university’s union while real men occupy the space all around them drinking beers and watching football. I decided to show up because I had nothing better to do, and proceeded to beat him over and over again at Super Street Fighter IV and Mortal Kombat 9. He did get his revenge, however, by beating me at Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which for the record the only reason he managed that is that I’m pretty sure he’s been practising every day and night ever since I beat him last time we got together to play fighting games. Well, that and the fact that I had completely forgotten all of the controls for the game.

We bailed early to get ready for the Trackmania 2 TNT, in which Rmanthorp managed to break the top 16 once or twice. If you watch the TNT at 20:37 when Jeff says “This guy has played 54 hours on this server.” he’s talking about Rmanthorp, dudes crazy.

...Though I’d totally beat him if I had enough money to buy Trackmania 2.

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Rin ga Utau, Mirai no Neiro

If you remember the heady days of last week, I talked about a doujin circle that made a visual novel based on the Vocaloid series. Well guess what, they made more than one! The second on their series features the ever lovable “Not as good as her twin brother LenKagamine Rin, so let’s find out if this story is also just Chobits!

The game starts off with main character walking around what is presumably the exact same city from the last game, passing a singing android. Thinking nothing of it he heads back to his apartment to find that that same android has broken in and slept in his bed. After trying to kick her out, and realising that she is in fact a singing android, she finds out that the main character is in fact a music producer, and requests that they become partners. He agrees, somewhat reluctantly, to make one incredible song for Rin, who says all she’s ever wanted is a song to be composed specifically for her, and then after that, she’ll leave. The two work together on the track, and Rin decides that they should enter the song in a contest to try and win some money, and that the main character should also sing along with her. Some drama here and there and you’ve got yourself another Vocaloid-based visual novel y’all!

The game also features an incredibly short side story featuring Miku and the main character from the previous game. Here Miku is now a famous singer and they two have to make a new EP for the fans. It’s an incredibly short throwaway scene and doesn’t really expand on anything, so, there’s that.

There is a third in Supplement Time’s Vocaloid visual novel series, but unfortunately it hasn’t been translated yet, so until that’s translated I guess this brings a close to my coverage of their work. Man, first Downhill Night and now this, maybe I should wait until all three parts of a trilogy are translated before I talk about them.

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The World God Only Knows II

Getting back into the swing of watching anime when I’m meant to be at lectures, I decided to marathon the 2 season of The World God Only Knows, an anime that’s so appropriate for this blog you guys don’t even know.

The anime follows Keima Katsuragi, known as the ‘capturing god’, a master of visual novels, who has completely ignored the real world in pursuit for the better 2D girls of visual novels. In season one, he accidentally makes a deal with hell, after thinking the e-mail he received was just spam, and is therefore joined by Elsea, a demon sent up from hell to capture loose souls. These loose souls attach themselves to the emptiness of a girls heart, and is it up to Keima to put his visual novel skills to use in the real world and win the hearts of the affected girls, and thus revealing and capturing the loose souls.

Each soul takes two or three episodes to capture, with the second season comprising of 4 souls being captured. The anime also sometimes just goes on about visual novels, sometimes is really amazing ways. One such instance is the final episode of the second season, which for the majority of the episode just pokes fun at Clannad, and Key in general.

It's kind of depressing when I knew exactly what the anime of parodying as soon as it showed up.
It's kind of depressing when I knew exactly what the anime of parodying as soon as it showed up.

I really enjoyed it, for what that’s worth. Keima and Elsea have a rather silly rapport with each other, and it’s a rather inventive way to have the typical harem anime without an actual harem. In the first season it’s said that the girls forget about what happened when they are possessed by the loose souls, and therefore after Keima is done wooing them, he doesn’t actually have to keep in contact with them at all, since at most to them it was like a dream. However, in this season, it’s revealed that Keima still occupies their hearts, but for the most part the girls seem to be oblivious to this, and Keima even more so. Two girls from the previous season reappear in this one, one of them does the generic shying away from Keima when they’re talking, and the other is a teen pop star sensation, whose song lyrics just happen to be exactly describe Keima, but even when listening to the songs he can’t tell in the slightest. It gives the impression that eventually all of the stories could come back around in some fashion, but I’m still on the fence on whether or not that’d be a good approach to take. Regardless it’s a good series, and even has a teaser for the girls that will feature in the third season, so that’s a thing!

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And that’s probably it! Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go back to coding that project I’ve been working on for over a year. It’s funny how I now have the drive to finish that just when university starts and I have a whole lot of work to do there. What’s the fun of having projects if you can’t procrastinate?

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