I Play Porn Games For The Story // 13.05.2012
By Psycosis 9 Comments
Why hello there! Welcome to yet another one of these stupid blogs in which I talk about visual novels and video games. It seemed like a daunting task but somehow in between all of these games and all of these Japanese anime characters, I actually finished another year of university. Turns out waiting until 2 weeks before submission to make 3 complete games is a little harder than you think, but on the other hand, I’m pretty awesome.
So how ‘bout those videogames?
Puzzle Bobble Universe
So during one of my midnight shopping trips I found the 3DS Bust-a-Move for pretty cheap. And, because I’m a sucker, I bought it. I had no knowledge that there actually was a Puzzle Bobble for 3DS, but always figured it was about as inevitable as death and Bomberman. IT was literally the first time I had ever seen of it, so eh, why not right?
The biggest problem with this game is just there’s not a lot in it. There’s a puzzle mode which is broken down into several worlds of 10 levels each, with every world culminating in a boss battle, and a challenge mode where when you complete the stage a few new lines are added. Yeah, that’s all there is in this game, no multiplayer, no fun bonus modes, no crazy campaign in which Bub has to traverse a giant map beating AI opponents, no level editor, none of that. In fact yeah, the Playstation 1 version of this game had more stuff packed into it.
It’s a shame too because I do really like Puzzle Bobble, but when the phone version has more features than handheld version, someone somewhere fucked up. Also a funny little aside, before I first loaded the game I told my friends “Hey I hope they have that one song in there, you know, the main theme from the Playstation version? That’d be cool.” It’s almost as if they heard my wish, because that song is in there! And it’s the only song in the game. Every single theme is just a remix of that one song, which might be the funniest part of the entire game.
Offspring Fling
No unfortunately this is not a Angry Birds spin-off off of Crazy Taxi, instead, this is an indie game that was recently released of Steam. Before even the introduction video is over I’ve bought and installed it. This is the tale of Offspring Fling.
But first here’s the video.
So if that trailer didn’t sell you, Offspring Fling is a platform game in which you pick up your offspring and fling them places. Well, mostly it’s to pick all of them up and head to the end of the level, but flinging them is usually needed to reach said end. Basic platforming tropes like buttons, platforms... err, jumping? Yeah it’s not the deepest game in the world, but you get flowers for completing levels fast enough, and I’m a sucker for time trials.
One of the really cool things about the collecting Offspring albums mechanic is how it effects the character’s movement. The more you’re carrying, the slower you move and the worse your jump. It’s a great small detail that adds a lot, as it means you have to strategically plan out which offspring to collect and in which order to get the best time. They also increase your size, in the fact that if you’re carrying one of the offspring you can’t fit through one gird high holes, but you can sure as hell fling them through and pick them up on the other side! Videogames!
So yeah again another news flash man who likes indie games enjoys new indie game. The only real downside is the lack of Steam achievements, which even though I might be the only person I know that actually cares about Steam achievements, it’s still pretty annoying. Luckily the platinum flowers which can only be obtained by beating the developer’s times of every level will render me completely insane instead.
Galaxy Angel
Like I’ve said in the past, I try and not partake in adapted Japanese media. Usually the transition between anime to visual novel and vice versa loses a lot of the original story. However, that really isn’t the case with Galaxy Angel, as it’s less of an adaptation of the anime story, more of a... well, giving it an actual goddamn story. Oh and this is actually a game too, so win win in that regard!
The main character is called Tact Mayers, the commander of the second Frontier Fleet, a group of five highly trained space combat peoples, who are in charge of protecting the white moon. They find Tact Mayers and force him to become their new commander. The story follows Tact and the group, known as the Angel Wings, trying to foil a plan hatched by the exiled Prince Eonia to pretty much take over everything.
But really enough about that, this is a videogame. By which I mean every so often the usual visual novel style story telling goes away and in its place appears a space strategy game. You control the five Angel Wings and, well, fight enemy ships. Objectives are pretty much the same of just destroy all the enemy ships, but sometimes you have to make sure cargo ships aren’t destroyed, or just make it to the other side of the map, and stuff like that.
The combat itself is pretty fun, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like you’re doing much. At the start of the game, it lets you know if you don’t issue any commands the characters will find the enemies themselves are just start fighting anyway. This means for the first like 6 or so fights I actually didn’t do anything in the game. There were a few close calls but yeah, just walked away and when I came back the mission was complete. Obviously later on the game gets a lot more challenging that you have to be paying attention to what’s going on, but I thought that was worth mentioning.
Even though there is that whole gameplay part of it, it’s still pretty visual novel through and through. Whenever the group isn’t fighting, you can choose different rooms in the spaceship to go check out. Sometimes one of the girls will be there and you get a small scene with them, complete with choices and flags to raise and whatnot. Around chapter 7 the team gets invited to a dance, and Tact gets to ask one of the team to be his partner, which is what seamlessly takes you into each character’s route. Though the girl you ask can say no if you don’t raise enough flags for her, which on one hand makes sense but on the other hand I had to go through the entire game and all those fights again just to see that route UGH.
Overall it’s actually a pretty great experience, something I honestly didn’t expect. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the anime so I was rather sceptical going into this, but the storyline is great if a tad drawn out, the gameplay is fun if a tad too slow, and the characters are interesting if a tad too Japan. I mean seriously, one of the squad members is 13 years old, sure she might be talented but aren’t there like space laws against that or something?
And that’s the end of another exciting week of stuff that I gone and done did. Fun fact I wrote this entire blog post without any pants on. Now you may be sitting there thinking “well that’s fair enough but I didn’t need to know that” but then maybe you’ll slowly start to remember I’m Scottish and that word is rather different over here.
So on that note!
9 Comments