Hello and welcome to another edition of ‘whatever I can be bothered to write in between programming and generally doing nothing’ also known as my stupid weekly blog! Somehow I managed to scrape by this week with, again, doing almost absolutely nothing. I don’t know why I’ve gotten into that kind of mindset but at the same time I don’t give a fuck, real life is boring, all I need is porn games! I doubt anyone actually reads anything past the title before quitting out due to the realisation this isn’t just a quick one off thread about a man and his love for visual novels and therefore they can’t make fun of said man for it. Or something, anyway, let’s get this over with.

Chantelise

So this week marked the release of Carpe Fulgur’s latest joint, Chantelise. People might know these guys better as the team responsible for translating Recettear, which I deemed my personal 4th best game of 2010, and they definitely keep up to their extremely high quality localization standards with their 2nd project.

So a little backstory is probably needed here. Both Recettear and Chantelise were originally created by doujin circle EasyGameStation in 2007 and 2006 respectively, this means technically Recettear is the follow up to Chantelise. Not since Armour of God has there been this much confusion between sequels. The only reason I mention this is so people who don’t know about it don’t start thinking “oh boy from the creators of Recettear? I loved that game I wonder what their next game is like!” Not saying this is a bad game, far from it, but it doesn’t have the unique shop system that Recettear had. Instead, this is just a straight up 3D Action RPG. Also I hope you liked the assets in Recettear, because they’re here too! Hooray for reused assets! ...Or rather, hooray for assets that were originally created for this game and then reused in Recettear because that was technically made after aaaah fuck it, Operation Condor 2: Chantelise.

So this is, as I said, an Action RPG, and an extremely fun one at that. You go around 6 dungeons hacking and slashing everything in your way, eventually reaching a boss that will kill you, and you try not to throw your controller through the monitor and send the bill to Carpe Fulgur. Yes this game, as well as being fun, is insanely hard in that great old style that only Japanese games can do so well. You might beat the dungeon levels with relative ease but before you know it you’re up against a boss that can hit you for more than half your health and before you can say “Oh fuck what do I do” you’re back at the town, defeated. One reason behind this is that your character doesn’t level up, that’s right, an RPG game without experience points, it’s kind of weird. Instead, all of the character progression is via better items, such as better armour, better magic wands, health vials that increase your max health, and so on. The health vials are consumed once purchased but most of everything else you need to dedicate an item slot to, of which you only have two at the beginning of the game, and you gain one more after defeating some bosses. This is a really interesting approach to take, as it can mean you can fight the final boss as weak as you started out the game if you’re crazy, but also means if you don’t use magic that much you don’t have to dedicate any slots to magic boosters. Items can also stack too, such as you can equip two gauntlets at once to further boost attack if that’s what you want to specialise in. Items can be changed via the pause menu in a dungeon too, which is great as you can customize your items to better suit different encounters, or different boss patterns. Wear a bunch of armour to stun a boss, and switch to all attack boosters while the boss can’t attack, strategy HO!

As previously stated there is also magic in this game, and the magic system is actually pretty interesting. When you attack an enemy sometimes they will drop magic crystals. You can pick up up to 6 of these crystals to perform magic attacks. These magic crystals come in earth, fire, wind and water variety (unfortunately, no heart crystal) and deal different attacks depending on the element. For instance, water is a homing projectile, wind is an electric attack, fire is a fireball and earth is a circulating ball that floats around Elise (to which Chante says “Stop. Hammerball!” oh Carpe Fulgur I love you). Now the interesting part comes from combining the elements together. At the start of the game Chante can combine two elements together, and by the end she can combine four. Two earths together gives Elise super armour, giving her more defence and no knockback from attacks, two fires is an explosion, one earth and two wind gives three revolving balls (if I remember correctly). The rate that the enemies drop these crystals and the fact that you can only carry six at one time mean you’ll more often than not have enough magic to spare and completely overkill enemies, though once you pick up crystals there is no way to sort them, so there is a strategy in only picking up, say, water crystals, as three water crystals is a nice healing spell that can be extremely useful especially in that final boss oh god.

There’s also fishing, and no I don’t know why either. I assume someone working on the game thought to himself why not and added in a whole fishing system for no real reason. You can get the fishing rod from someone in the first level, and then whenever you’re in a level with water (or lava, whatever) you can go fishing. The item screen even keeps a tally of what type of fish you’ve collected, of which there are 46, and how many. Is there any point to this? No, not really, but it’s an incredibly throwaway thing that most people will probably won’t even come across until they’ve finished the game, so it’s nice to have a little something else to do.

Another cool little thing is that every single level has a hidden treasure, giving you good reason to go back and explore said levels again, because these hidden treasures contain some of the best equipment in the game. These hidden treasures will only pop up once certain requirements have been filled, be it kill a certain enemy first, or hit all the boulders in the level, and whatnot. Once you’ve found all the hidden treasure in a dungeon, this opens up a secret new level that usually involves a bunch of giant enemies all trying to kill you. Each level also has a time attack mode if you want to go that route, but this mode doesn’t give you a goal time or anything, meaning for me at least there isn’t that much incentive to find the fastest routes through each level.

I do have to point out that the story and the script in general is rather fantastic. That’s not just me fanboying out on Carpe Fulgur, I really found all of their work to be absolutely amazing... as fanboy-ish as that sounds. The story is rather basic for the most part; the two sisters Chante and Elise have been searching for the past five years for the witch that turned Chante into a fairy. The game starts at this five year mark in which the sisters reach a town with a famous fortune teller, hoping that she can help them on their journey. You meet up with the owner of an item shop who helps you on your journey and adventure awaits. There are a few foreshadowing moments that makes you just instinctively go “she’s the witch!” or at least I did, but the way the story actually unravels is rather well done and not that predictable at all, and a final scene that made me smile way too much.

I really enjoyed this game, and will probably continue to play it despite technically finishing the game. The only thing I have left to do is complete the ‘survival dungeon’, which gives you 60 random floors with bosses at every 10th, to see how low you can go. The floors increase will difficulty with every floor, meaning I’ve only ever gotten to about 25 (little over an hour in) before dying in two or three hits. In all fairness my tactic is equipping all the power up items, speed boots to go faster, winged boots to air dash and the darkness crystal that, without any defence items, gives me a pitiful three defence is return for a charged up health sapping attack. Now that I mention it that’s probably the problem, but as long as I stick to my strategy of “don’t get hit” I should be fine.

Tony Hawk’s Underground

So everyone’s favourite AjayRaz was talking about buying Tony Hawk’s Underground on twitter, and that made me bust out my old copy for the Gamecube, and almost as if by result my Gamecube, to play it myself.

This game is still super fun.

This is the 2nd last Tony Hawk game I’d declare is still a lot of fun to play; Underground 2 is not that last one due to it being a giant pile of stupid, rather American Wasteland is. Super 8 or whatever is okay from what I’ve played of it and the less said about pretty much everything after that the better. But whatever this is about Underground.

What can I say about a game that’s almost 8 years old? Surely ‘this game is still super fun’ covers almost everything about this game at this point. But then again I’ve never been known for having short statements. Gameplay in this game is the peak of the Tony Hawk franchise in my opinion. While all the shitty parkour stuff in American Wasteland can be used for even sillier combos, the hip transfer and wall plant was the last few additions the game needed to be absolutely amazing. Level design is pretty great too, something I can really only appreciate now as opposed to when I originally played it, though including Tony Hawk 2 levels such as the School just puts how much better the team had gotten at their level design.

So this game is dumb, especially the storyline. Again these are things I can only really ‘appreciate’ now, but hot damn Neversoft are so goddamn racist. Like what the hell how did they get away with some of these characters? Also the car controls are the shittest thing I’ve ever seen in any videogame ever created in the world since the beginning of time. Then again, the entire game is meant to be incredibly stupid (I hope), so in that vein I’m playing as the Spy from Team Fortress 2.

(I apologize for the insanely terrible quality)

You know this actually helps the story make sense; I should’ve never worn that Eric Sparrow mask in Hawaii!

VVVVVV

I also played a little bit of VVVVVV due to the recent rather drastic changes to the game, and I wanted to see if I can still speed run this mother. It seems like the changes have only messed up one screen of my speed run which I can probably get around by being better at videogames.

If you can’t tell I really like this game, having technically bought it three times now (via original site, Steam and the latest indie bundle) and including it in the previously mentioned best of 2010 list. I find it great for attempting speed runs, because I’m insane. I’ve been trying to beat it in under 15 minutes (15:42 being my current record) but that seems damn near impossible unless I completely nail that fucking Gravitron screen. Also because I can, here’s a little taste of my speed run from like last year, to prove that I’m not all talk.

Saya no Uta

If you’ve ever wondered where the girl from my videogame banner comes from well have I got news for you, she’s from Saya no Uta, a game that is ‘fucked up’ in every sense of the phrase and even in some senses that it isn’t. The main character, Fuminori, three months prior to the start of the game was in a traffic accident that killed his parents and left him extremely injured. However, the operation that helped him survive had accidentally completely and utterly messed up his vision. Not to the point in which he can’t see, rather, everything he sees is rancid and disgusting. Surfaces are covered in pulsing vile flesh and his best friends are only seen as disgusting monsters. He tries his hardest to cover this up, but every moment of his life is torture. The only upside to this is a girl he met at the hospital, seemingly the only thing unaffected by this, called Saya, whom he now lives with. The story basically covers Fuminori and Saya’s life together and some really bad things start happening to both them and Fuminori’s friends.

So that’s the basic overview, as mentioned before the game has a rather, unique style to it. By that I mean the visuals are super gory. So gory, is fact, some screens actually made me physically ill when looking at them. At the beginning there are options to blur or darken the images if you have a weak stomach, which should be indication alone to how nauseating these images can get. And really that’s the main draw for this visual novel, in my opinion. Not to say that the story is bad in any way, but it’s definitely the style that makes this one stand out among the rest.

The story goes in interesting directions for sure. Rather predictably, Saya is actually a gruesome monster, and it’s only Fuminori that sees her as a girl. The inside of Fuminori’s house has been ‘painted’ in such a way that makes it not perceived as vile flesh, which as you’ll see a pattern here, is actually rather disgusting to ‘normal’ people who are unfortunate enough to enter his house. For a large portion of the story Fuminori eats normal food only to survive due to it being repulsive to him. Though at some points he comes home to find what is actually a corpse, but to him, looks and tastes like delicious fruit.

I find this rather interesting especially when it comes to choosing what ending you want. From anybody else’s perspective in the story, Fuminori is an evil cannibalistic psychopath who should be put into a mental institution, yet from his point of view, for the majority of the story anyway, he’s just trying to survive in a nightmarish world. Do you want the protagonist to have the best ending possible? Or would you rather have him die? It’s a weird thing to be given the perspective of someone who could be the bad guy, especially when what’s the best ending for him might be the worst possible ending for everyone else.

I’d say if you can handle a decent amount of gore you should check this one out, it’s pretty short but as stated the story and style do enough things differently from everything else to warrant a check, in my opinion.

Again I’ve found myself messing around with audio software. This time I decided to practise transitions between songs, trying to make them seamless or at least not extremely terrible. To do that I made this 40 minute long mashup, featuring everything from Timbaland to Avenged Sevenfold to Spice Girls to Gorillaz to more Timbaland. I wouldn’t blame you for not listening to it to be honest, but you know, I always like feedback, no matter how harsh! Mashups Are Magic!

I’m wondering how many people (if any) have been interested in the visual novels I’ve been talking about. If I’ve made even one duder more interested in these kinds of games then I’m doing god’s work I guess. But yeah, really interested in that, and I hope you enjoyed reading this! I never like asking for people to post but any opinions on what I write about (or really my style of writing) are appreciated. I also wonder how many people just don’t bother reading this because of the name of the blog, but then again I can’t say that here because they wouldn’t be reading and therefore don’t know I’m wondering that. Yeah. Here’s to another week I guess!