Hello once again and welcome to my blog of rapidly declining introductions! Also some other stuff but whatever. Here I talk about videogames, visual novels, sometimes anime, mashups, programming or anything else that comes to mind that isn’t my personal white girl problems, I mean come on, why would the internet care about my power my pleasure MY PAIN, BABBYYY. So sit back and get ready to read yet another poorly written (and non-proof read) blog!

Shadow The Hedgehog

No I don’t know why either.

At some point this week I must’ve said to myself “Gee I’m really bored of playing all these good quality games!” or something, maybe I passed out and found myself in a fever dream, a dream that told me the only way to stop the world from exploding was to play Shadow The Hedgehog. Maybe I found this game after playing a bunch of Mario sports titles and thought to myself “Haha, no thanks, I don’t hate myself that much!” and put it in my Gamecube anyway. Regardless of the reason, I played some mother fucking Shadow The Hedgehog.

I’m going to preface this by saying I got this game for Christmas the year it came out, and didn’t even get past the 2nd level before taking the disc out and storing it away forever. I had attempted to play through it between now and then too, if my save file indicates anything. I loaded up the save and I was met with Shadow saying “For what purpose do I exists?” Already I was about to take the disc and smash it so it would not hurt another soul. But instead, I quit out, and started a new game instead, just so I can get more of this amazing story.

So really, fuck this game. That’s my thoughts on it. But since this is my blog lets elaborate. This game is very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very mediocre.

Why would the dark lord or whatever keep trying to side with Shadow after Shadow killing a bunch of his men? Why is Charmy in the game? Why would the ‘good guys’ still be attacking Shadow despite him being on their side? Why would Eggman send his robots to the sky level, and then ask for Shadow’s help? In the same level, why would Eggman’s robots be attacking you if the plan was for you to be of their side? Why doesn’t Eggman just ask the robots that HE SENT THERE to destroy the pillars instead of waiting for Shadow? Why is Charmy in the game? Who built the four toed statue? Why would Eggman build himself a roulette vehicle and even give the option of the vehicle attacking itself? Why would Eggman also make spawning rings a roulette option? Why would Eggman make GIVING SHADOW CHAOS CONTROL a roulette option? How did Kate get the other key to the safety deposit box? Why did Sonic team feel the need to add a hint sphere that says ‘jump as high as you can’ to reach an edge? Was Mikhail recruited by the Others before or after the Purge? Why is Charmy in the game? If Shadow is indeed an android why did he still have that memory of Maria? Why don’t the rules of time travel apply to Desmond? If Eggman made an army of Shadow androids why was he keep on insisting that the Shadow the player was controlling help him? SERIOUS GUYS WHY IS CHARMY IN THIS GAME?

So I completed the game once, I decided to go the straight normal path because that took the least amount of effort. Will I go back and beat the rest? Depends on how much I hate myself I guess, but not right now, because the game is just too goddamn stupid.

Jamestown

Back when the Summer Steam sales happened I had little to no money, so I was extremely annoyed I couldn’t get myself a copy of Jamestown for half price. Luckily though, Jamestown for half price just so happened to be one of Steam’s Daily Deals this week, when Rufi91 pointed out to me due to their typo of saying Jamestown was 650% off today, so I snatched that up the moment I could!

Now I’m a huge fan of bullet hells, playing way too much of the Touhou games and even making one at one point. The only problem is that I was never really that good at them, usually getting through the opening of a super hard level before getting nervous and dying over and over again. Therefore I was cautiously looking forward to this game, as I can see it giving me a similar level of challenge.

The great thing about Jamestown is the scoring system and how the vaulting works, making the game a lot of fun to play even in the higher difficulty settings. Basically, when you kill enemies they drop gears, collecting gears causing your vault meter to fill. Once full, you can ‘vault’, in which you get a bunch of points for staying in vault mode. Vault mode can be extended by collecting more gears, and anyone who wants the highest score possible, will want to stay in vault mode for the entire level. However, vault mode also acts as the player’s shield. Once you entire vault mode you get a giant shield, and any bullet that enter the shield are destroyed and give you points. This shield only lasts for a few seconds, however, and not the entire vault. Though what you can do, is vault again for a second shield. This second shield is a lot smaller and doesn’t even last as long as the first shield, but who cares, it’s a shield! When you do this, the vault ends automatically and you can’t add to your vault meter for a brief period. This is a really good system as it’s a great balance between letting people who are crazy get a mess of points, and letting people like me who can’t handle all the crazy have a few fleeting seconds of safety... before crashing and burning spectacularly.

Besides the short campaign there are also a bunch of bonus levels in case you thought the main game wasn’t hard enough... eep. Some of these just throw a bunch of enemies at you and tell you to survive for a certain length of time, which may not surprise you, I found to be INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT, but they also do a bunch of score based levels. These levels are structured really well to train you into getting the most points out of enemies. For instance, the bomb enemy that when they explode, sprays a gratuitous amount of bullets in every direction. If you kill them early on you get a few points, however, if you kill them just before they’re about to explode, you get a lot more. Other enemies work the same, such as destroying the turrets on some ships before destroying the main ship will only net more points, and more gears. Knowing these are essential for keeping a combo throughout the entire level, but again since I’m terrible at these games, surviving is the main priority, but it’s cool that these systems are in place.

Trackmania

So I was just minding my own business one night when suddenly, Rufi91 pops up out of nowhere and is all “Psy you have to come play on this server this music is AWESOME.” And so started an hour or so of Rufi91 and I playing in this weird server that had a bunch of weird launching levels that made no sense with songs like Teenage Dirtbag playing in the background. Yo this game is silly.

I absolutely love it for that. There was a time in which I was the kind of Ultimate Hyper Trackmania United Forever: Star Edition HD Remix (This time it’s Trackmania) player that would only play single player, like I do with all games. I would be obsessed with getting the Nadeo medal in every single track, and watch as my worldwide rank got higher and higher and higher, and I was having fun! I really enjoy time trail games like that. But then, Rufi91 showed me how goddamn silly the online is and I’ve never looked back. It’s still the same time trail concept obviously but isn’t of really well thought out levels it’s just “here’s a few boosters and a ramp, there are 10 exits spread out in random positions in the air, you have 2 minutes GO.” Such a great game.

Bastion

I have already stated my love for Bastion in the past, but when I went on Steam to pass some time I noticed they added 7 new achievements. Figured I couldn’t just leave the game sitting there without an S rank, I loaded it up. Little did I know the pain and torture that was about to unfold.

Rather unsurprisingly, six out of those seven achievements all focus on beating Who Knows Where with idols. Three for beating each of the three with 5 or more, and three for straight up beating each one with all 10 idols intact. The last achievement is upgrading all the weapons which I totally already did so yay for loading up and automatically getting achievements. I had tried a 10 idol run before these achievements and got to round about wave 10 in each one, and since the leaderboards work different, thus beating it first didn’t give that guy the top spot forever, I didn’t feel compelled to keep at it. Now with achievements, however, it’s a whole different story.

So far I’ve only managed to complete the first Who Knows Where map with all ten idols. The birds in the 2nd map really mess me up big time, but apart from that I can probably do that entire one without having to even take any potions. So far the everything in the 3rd map is messing me up, which is super annoying considering I found those enemies to be the easiest in the game in terms of the storyline, but I digress. I weapon layout for the entire game since the first playthrough has been the dual pistols and the war machete. The war machete is great since I’ve given it the poison upgrade, which is very effective against the regenerating health. Mostly my strategy is just throwing that, busting a few rounds of the pistols and running away like a coward, and it totally worked for the first map! The birds, however, like to run away as well, and I can’t seem to take them out without resorting to my special ability, which right now is the Portal Gel Canister, but even that sometimes will be taken out before it can deal and decent damage.

So yeah, I’m still trucking along with that, hopefully I’ll be able to do the other two in the near future, or just in time for SuperGiant Games to add even more achievements like the fiends they are!

Family Project

So this is a relatively better known visual novel than some of the other stuff I’ve played, but I’ve never really felt compelled to read it. Though the time finally came and I decided to see what all the fuss is about, time to delve into the Family Project.

So the main character is Tsukaka, he works at a Chinese restaurant and lived in a small apartment all alone. However, his world gets turned upside down when he finds Chunhua, a young Chinese girl asleep in the back alley behind the restaurant. Though a request by the manager of the restaurant, he takes her back to his apartment. While living there she starts to learn Japanese and it’s revealed she travelled to Japan in hopes of finding her mother. While this is happening, a group of thugs are trying to capture Chunhua. Another homeless man called Hiroshi, who upon seeing Chunhua being rescued gets jealous, shows up and fends off the attackers, and successfully barges his way into living in the flat as well. The flat gets destroyed and all three become homeless. The three happen upon a woman called Masumi about to commit suicide and decide to help her and convince her not to go through with it. Then, they find an apparently abandoned home where they take shelter, and come in contact with another homeless girl called Matsuri, who also took shelter in the home. After living there for a while the original owner, Aoba, and get kicked out. Tsukaka, with help from his ex-‘girlfriend’ Jun, eventually convince Aoba to let them all live in the household. And thus the seven of them form the ‘Family Project’, a group of rejected people all living together for mutual benefit.

Through living with everyone, Tsukaka learns more and more about each person and why they are now in the position they are in. Though from the point that the Family Project starts, which means the opening credits 6 hours into playing, approximately a whole load of fuck nothing happens for a few hours before any real conflict arises. While each character does have their own development, the main one seems to be Jun, Tsukaka’s ex-girlfriend, in a sense. Jun actually just cares about money, and when whoring herself out to Tsukaka, Tsukaka started having feelings for her, causing her to leave the school. Each route has their share of the worst things possible. A lot of violence, rape and just terrible stuff in general await you in each backstory. The story takes a turn where Hiroshi takes out a giant loan and thus has thugs after him. Masumi then gives Tsukaka her mother’s savings of 3 million yen, with the idea that he will know where the money should be spent. Each character eventually goes their separate ways and the Family Project ends. The thugs set fire to the house they were all living in, and depending on the route, where some people are still currently living.

The story itself is rather lengthy, a little too lengthy in my opinion. I don’t mind a long story but as I said earlier there are a lot of points that just feel like absolutely nothing is happening. A lot of the character development, while I agree the changes can’t happen that fast, just feel like everyone is going in circles in some points. This is brought into much sharper contrast when the endings all seem rather rushed, and have a surprising amount of inconsistencies for something so methodically paced. Then again, a since a lot of the character development happens in the common route before the split, there isn’t really that much need to play each route. While each route gives a lot of information about that specific heroine, most of them can be inferred from the common route.

This is a rather old visual novel too, released in 2001, so I can’t really complain about the art or the UI stuff. But gosh darn it I’m going to anyway. To be fair the art still holds up pretty well, with only a few CGs looking stupid, not Clannad stupid but they get pretty close. The UI however, oh boy, that is some ghetto ass stuff. Saving in this game just pops up the generic Windows 98 looking pop up with a list of places to save. This rather obviously carries over to the options, giving you the pop up and a bunch of sliders and check boxes. I probably should have expected this, and especially when I loaded up the game and it’s all 640x480 and shit.

If you can put up with a rather drawn out story, Family Project is pretty good. The characters are well realised and pretty believable all things considered. The things considered being the translation and the fucking translation. The translation, while not Hinatabokko bad, can be rather annoying at times. By which I mean, there’s an ‘over 9000’ reference within the first hour. So... there’s that. But still, it’s a pretty decent visual novel and I can see why it’s so popular, but I wouldn’t call it a personal favourite.

I really need to stop with this shit, but a friend of mine sent me this image of Pinkie Pie and Snoop Dogg so of course I had to make a mashup to accompany it.

And that’s my week in a nutshell. I’ve currently been having a lot of terrible ideas for mashups, including one that I think is just the worst thing in the world so obviously I’m going to try and make that work. But apart from that nothing really much happening, I actually haven’t worked on my game Bullet Bill 3 since making that trailer and I really don’t know why, the sooner that’s out of the way the sooner I can justify all my new stupid ideas! Anyway whatever, until next time!