Psycosis

Hey guys! Blog time once again! Here I talk about things, you probably know the drill by now. Then again, if I don’t constantly repeat myself every week, what the hell can go here as the intro? Me talking about myself talking about things? Maybe next week I’ll be able to reflect on this intro and talk about how I talked about talking about things. Surely that’s how I’ll win over readers, right?

Anyway videogames, visual novels, random song, let’s go.

Soul Calibur 5

The Soul Calibur games have interested me. I actually never got into the series until the fourth instalment, which I did enjoy for all its weird faults. Now that Soul Calibur V is out, however, the game has taken an incredibly sharp turn in terms of what I enjoy about it. By the time the fifth game came out what I really loved, and what I’m sure the developers realised, is the custom characters.

When playing soul Calibur with my homies, the main characters could not be further from our minds. Instead, what we do is just make a bunch of really silly original character do not steals and fight with them. Or we’ll make characters from other franchises (as I’m sure everyone does) like Phoenix Wright, Legend of Zelda, and human versions of colourful horses.

But the real fun comes from the random character selection. There’s an option to just create a completely random male or female fighter right from the character select. The results are usually hilarious and sometimes we feel compelled to recreate said random characters after the fight. Last we played there were three of us in total, playing on a traditional ‘winner stays on’ system. My friend managed to beat both of us 9 times in a row with Chris-chan, making it incredibly embarrassing for us.

Also I guess it’s a fighting game. But who cares about that part of it.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

After Soul Calibur we decided to play a real fighting game, and threw in Brawl. I have found memories of Brawl, so I was looking forward to playing it again after a few years of ignoring it.

And to be honest I sort of wished I continued to ignore it.

I don’t know what it is, but I really don’t like Brawl anymore. I’ve playing the original and Melee recently as well and I honestly do prefer Melee. I remember closer to the release of Brawl there were a lot of people who thought that, and I thought they were crazy, but now I totally get what they’re saying.

Not to say Brawl isn’t a fun game. I had a few one on one matches with a friend of mind, and won most of them. It’s still fun seeing the brawl token, or whatever it’s called, spawn and both of us scramble over to get it. But there’s just something about Melee that feels better.

Looking back on it, I think I enjoyed the anticipation of Brawl a lot more than the game itself. The daily reveals were always fun to check, and I honestly hope they do something similar for the new games.

Subspace was awesome too, but it’s a thing that I don’t think I can go back and play again... Man, I’m really trying to justify my original love of this game, but I don’t know anymore.

Modnation Racers

Speaking of games I had fond memories of before realising on recent plays that they’re not as fun as I remember, I also played Modnation Racers for about 2 hours. Meaning there were like 4 races and 100 minutes of loading.

Seriously they didn’t manage to fix that? Anyway.

Maybe it’s just because I’ve been playing a lot of Crash Team Racing recently, which is undeniably the best kart racer ever made, but yeah this game just feels off as well. What I do like about this game, however, i the boost system. Being able to sacrifice boost for a shield is a really cool mechanic that adds a surprising amount of strategy when you’re in first, which is always welcome as usually being in first in a kart racer is the most boring thing.

But apart from that there’s not a lot here that’s worth much. The main bulk of the game comes from the creation tools which are still second to none, but man there’s a lot of terrible stuff out there. And we decided to find them. Our adventures brought us to a Bob Ross track.

A Bob Ross track.

So let me see if I can properly describe how amazing this thing is. It’s a relatively simple track, but all around the track at versions of Bob Ross’ paintings. Then in the middle of the track you do a huge jump.

And you jump over Bob Ross.

Like seriously.

So obviously it’s the best track ever made. And I’m just going to drop the mic… or whatever the blog equivalent is.

Oh right yeah the visual novel.

Violated Hero ~I Wanted To Chivalrously Save The World~

Well this is fun. Violated Hero got recently translated, so I decided to give it a shot. I will admit it made me curious in the same way Monster Girl makes me curious. (I’m not going to talk about Monster Girl Quest here, but hey, that’s a visual novel... yeah). Both games have RPG trapping and which the objective of the game is to obviously win, the ‘real’ objective is to lose.

What I mean by this is you win battle to raise stats, and hopefully continue the story, but you lose battles to see sex scenes. Taking the obvious stupidity aside for just a second, I think it’s hilarious that a game can incentivise players to actually lose battles, and therefore lose progress, via porn scenes. It’s crazy, but then again, the game is so difficult that it’s pretty much impossible not to lose several times while playing the game.

The story, which is obviously why we’re all here, is pretty basic. Dude called Seed wants to go into a dungeon to kill a dragon. And that’s it! As you play the game you’ll meet a lot of different girls all in the same dungeon, but mostly for different reasons. Some will join you and then ultimately backstab you, resulting in a fight, and some will just straight up fight you when you meet. Each character has their own little story but... you know. These are the battles that result in scenes when you lose, but there are also regular random encounters in between these fights.

Seed starts off incredibly weak, barely surviving the first few fights. Every random encounter will give you a boost in either HP, MP, speed, attack power, and the such, usually around a 5% increase. The specific female fights grant Seed a much higher stat increase when they’re defeated. And while death is ‘encouraged’, it’s also necessary to beat the game. On death you return to the start of the dungeon floor with all the stat increases intact. So then the obvious tactic is to just farm the special battles once Seed is powerful enough to beat them. You also get 5 potions to fully heal but you never find any more of them.

So is the game fun? Eh, it’s a pretty average RPG, but even I know that’s not the draw for this one. The art is better than Monster Girl Quest, but I prefer the actual game mechanics of Monster Girl Quest an-

Wait, no, no Monster Girl Quest talk.

The premise, as I said, really intrigued me, but the game is too short and too basic for there to be any real worth here. Having said that, I did enjoy what I played, it’s a weird feeling to just give up a fight you could probably win with enough strategy, just to get a stupid scene and start from the beginning again. I’d love to see this idea applied to other games... just, maybe not porn as the incentive.

So that ends another week of stupidity I guess. Next week should be interesting for reasons I can’t go into. No seriously, I couldn’t even if I wanted to, I had to sign an NDA and everything. Though I think I like saying that I’ve signed an NDA about a project more than actually working on said project. Oh well.

Oh look it’s this thing again. Welcome to my blog of videogames, visual novels and mashups. Now usually I come up with a decent implementation of a song in the intro of these blogs but this time I’m just going to be completely transparent, mostly because I can’t think of any way to directly link into this, sorry about that. Well, sorry, I mean, for Party Rocking.

I’ve still got it.

So in this video LMFAO are all house partying, and then the emergency services all come over to party. The ambulance is treating a patient who has blood coming out of his leg.

Or more speficially his knee.

The blood is caused by an arrow.

Or, to put it bluntly, he has an arrow in his knee.

Videogames right guys?

Critical Mass

So if you’re anything like me, you buy a lot of indie games and end up never playing them. I think the rise of different indie bundles has made this an even bigger problem for me. The moment in which I noticed it was a problem was probably a few years ago during a steam sale. They had a pack of 10 awesome indie games that I went to buy, only to find out I already owned all 10 of them. The problem has only gotten worse from there. But anyway, this week I decided to load up one of these games, and the game I picked was Critical Mass.

Critical Mass is a fairly basic game all things considered, there is a group of coloured blocks in the centre of the screen, and you launch coloured blocks at it in the hopes you make a cluster of the same colour, which causes them to explode. Think of it as 3D Bust-a-Move.

...Actually yeah, that’s all this is, 3D Bust-a-Move... damn.

That isn’t a bad thing; of course, Bust-a-Move is pretty dope. But that’s really all there is to it. There are a few different modes but they’re mostly what you’d expect out of a match 3 game. There are powerups to slow time or get more points when you match 3 and stuff like that.

I could write several more paragraphs talking about how this is totally a match 3 game but in 3D but guys this is a match 3 game in 3D. That really should be enough.

Catherine

Catherine was recently released in the UK, the only problem is I’m completely unable to play it, as in my flat I don’t have a PS3 or a 360. However, one of my friends bought it and asked if I wanted to come over and play some of the multiplayer. Now I didn’t even know the game had multiplayer, and was completely unsure as to what that would even entail.

“The block puzzle stuff” my friend said “there’s a 2 player mode of that.”

I didn’t really know what to expect after hearing that. Obviously from what I’ve heard via the Giant Bomb review the block puzzle portion of this game is the worst part of it, so having a 2 player version of that seemed to be the worst thing ever. So obviously, I agreed.

And I had a great time.

So the 2 player mode is called Babel, it’s a supposedly randomly generated level you can play after getting a certain amount of gold statues in the main game. Babel has four different stages, with the later ones requiring more gold statues, and are just scored on how fast you can make it to the top. It can be played single player, which makes the most sense, but the two player mode exists, and oh boy it is frantic.

The second player controls Katherine, which sure I haven’t actually played the game yet but that doesn’t make any sense, and has the exact same set of abilities, which is to say she can push and pull blocks. Just like the main game the objective is to make it to the top of the tower, which I’m told is a lot taller in these Babel challenges than in the main game. The weird part of this 2 player, however, is that the two players never really interact with each other. The two players can’t stand on the same block, which is fine I guess, but then if you pull a block and bump into the other player, that player will be hit back, and in some cases fall off and die. Oh, and if one character dies, it triggers game over for both. The other weird thing is if one character is on a block, and the other character moves said block, the character on the block doesn’t move with it, and will instead fall and again in some cases die because of it. My friend and I got about half way up the second stage of Babel, until I climbed onto a block he decided to push. My character ended up climbing onto thin air before falling to her death, giving us both a game over.

So maybe the two player mode isn’t fully thought out, but I had a lot of fun with it regardless. While it took me a little bit to fully understand the controls, but when I did my friend and I had a lot strategy trying to get both of us up the tower. We managed to beat the first stage after only a few failings and it felt really good getting to the end. I did play a little bit of the beginning stuff to see how they were single player and I also enjoyed that. I’m sure if/when I ever get to play it again and get to the end game I’ll see what everyone is complaining about, but from what little I played I was left wanting more.

Soul Link

You know what’s weird? I’ve never been that big a fan of sci-fi. There’s something about future or near future tech that always seemed to silly to me. Sure, by the same token I love Red Dwarf and stuff like that but the majority of stuff is just boring to me. Japan really likes their sci-fi, however, and by the same token I usually don’t watch anime or read mange with sci-fi settings. Hell I think Japan loves sci-fi almost as much as they love high schools, so obviously I was going to find myself reading a sci-fi visual novel at some point. So with that in mind, here is Soul Link.

The game takes place in the far flung future of 2045. A second year space cadet called Aizawa Shuuhei is sent to an orbital space station called ‘Aries’ on a training mission. While there, he meets a few familiar faces, including his childhood friend Nao, and his younger brother Ryouta. However, the space station is then suddenly attacked by space terrorists called ‘Jararacas’, the station is successfully evacuated for the most part, which means rather conveniently, the only people left on the ship are Aizawa, his friends and a few others. The stragglers must work together to fight back against the space terrorists, and return home.

The story goes through quite a lot of twists and turns but the whole idea of fighting back against these god damn space terrorists remain a pretty great constant. There are a lot of battle related story choices you have to make, which results in rather quick deaths if you choose the wrong ones. However, by the end of the game, or hell even two thirds into the game, the story is so bizarre that isn’t hard to really keep up with what’s going on. I think even at some point the terrorists kidnap someone’s friend and ‘torture’ her, which could have been an interesting plot point at the end but so much crazy gets piled on top of it that it just gets forgotten by the time everything wraps up.

The way the game handles different routes is actually pretty interesting. The game is split up into four different chapters, with chapter three being the only place the routes differ. The reason behind this is you end up playing as two different characters. Shuuhei, the character you control at the start, actually goes missing at a certain rather pivotal part of the story. The game then switches perspectives to his younger brother Ryouta, and you play the rest of the story as him. It’s a surprisingly effective technique that lets the user see two different sides of the same character, and puts into perpective the character growth Ryouta going from being unreliable to having to make quick decisions when faced with peril.

The biggest drawback for this game is its own medium. And by that, I mean the fact that it’s a porn game. Now I usually make sure not to even mention this stuff, as I prefer to focus on the story, but every so often these scenes are just too much that they detract from the experience. Another part in which the medium detracts from the experience is the rather strict story structure. There is a point in the game in which the character you’re controlling has to patrol the ship, you’re given like 6 or 7 different places to move to, and 20 or so turns to see everything. And if you don’t trigger every single thing, you’re greeted with a bad end. Trial and error is the only way I can see that section working without a walkthrough, which doesn’t make it a pleasant experience at all.

In that case, maybe the story works better in the anime adaptation which I have never seen and probably will never see so I can’t say for sure. Which I can say, though, is that it’s a pretty decent story that might go a little bit too crazy, and would have been a lot better if some of the supposedly essential visual novel trappings weren’t there. Ever17 managed to pull off ‘trapped in a place with a ragtag group of dudes’ pretty well without these trappings... just saying!

Smile 3x

Something that’s become commonplace, a song shows up in my favourite anime Mahou no Yuujou!! –My Friendship is a Colourful Horse- and I end up mashing it together with other songs. Last week featured the ‘Smile’ song, a song that was actually leaked last November. In true impatient fashion, I had actually scoped this mashup out when the song was originally leaked, but now that the song has actually appeared in the show, I could release it! Hooray!

But who cares about that?

Alphabetronome

This week also marked the release of my biggest mashup project to date! This mashup is called Alphabetronome, it’s 26 minutes long and features 260 different songs.

As you can probably tell from the title, this mashup album follows the theme of the alphabet. Every minute represents a new letter of the alphabet, and has 10 songs for that letter. The first minute features 10 songs that start with the letter A, the second minute is all B, and so on for the entire mix.

It’s been a long time coming (pretty much what I’ve been doing with my time since the start of the month) and I’m really happy with how it turned out. Obviously due to the length and the fact that so little of it is to do with ponies (3 out of 260 being pony related) I doubt it’ll actually hit with the audience I’ve found on Youtube. And I guess I’m sort of annoyed at that, but it’s not like I can do anything about it. I’ve never really know where I can promote my mashups and usually just hope people stumble on to them.

But that’s neither here nor there, I hope you enjoy it.

So with that it’s about damn time I stop typing. Which means I can just go back to sleep for another 6 or so days before realising “oh right that blog thing” and typing up another few hundred words about videogames. Gee I sure make my life sound exciting don’t I?

@ImHungry: Double machine translation mixed in with my own even further engrish. In same cases it's better than what I'd be able to write normally!

@Devoid: The only push I needed to get it initially was "yo this is by those Phoenix Wright guys." That team has a nack with creating amazing universes and stories.

@Poki3: I did have a 'better written' version but I deleted it in exchange for this version. My one line review is something like "A touching story marred only by the fact it's impossible to read."

@Mento: Missle is absolutely amazing. If you haven't finished it I won't spoil anything, but Missle somehow gets even better about half way through.

Hey guys, blog time again. And I mean the REAL blog, not the ‘off brand’ stuff you may have been reading. I play videogames and read visual novels, then try to write up my thoughts in this weekly post. Though you probably know that by now, I’ve been doing this for a while now. Seriously, how long do I have to do this before I can retire to a beach or something? These porn games really take a lot out of me... you know, because the stories are so good. Anyway, blog.

Ghost Trick

Now this week, instead of playing any of the new games that I’ve bought over the last few weeks on various indie sales, or hell, even the games I bought on Steam years ago that still haven’t been as much as installed, I played Ghost Trick. Ghost Trick was on my list of my favourite games from last year, and because of that I decided to dig out my copy and play it again. However, a chapter or so into the game, it was released on the iOS. So obviously, I stopped playing Ghost Trick to go purchase Ghost Trick.

Guys I really like Ghost Trick.

If you didn’t already know, you should go out and get Ghost Trick.

Just saying.

What I will say is that I really don’t like the iOS port of the game. Now granted I’m on an iPhone so it could be a better experience on iPad, but I guess I just prefer the DS touch screen to the iPhone touch screen. Also, since the iPhone screen is slightly more widescreen than the DS screen, there’s a weird margin when playing the game. Then again, none of these issues are game breaking, and it’s still a great game regardless of the small gripes I have against the port.

The best part about it is the story. Now, without spoiling anything, I finished the game when it first came out in one sitting. Literally, went to the store the second it opened, bought the game, ignored my classes and didn’t leave my bed until the game was finished. I remember being a little annoyed that I wouldn’t be able to replay the game because of the story.

The story makes the game, and the twist at the very end is pretty funny and amazing, and puts a lot of the game into perspective. However, I also thought it would render the game worthless. There was no point playing through a story again if you already know what’s going to happen. But then the best thing happened. I forgot. Now I didn’t forget the big twist, but I forgot about a lot of the smaller stuff. I replayed the first chapter with the knowledge of the main twist, and was somehow even more confused about what was going on. It made replaying the game a lot better than I thought it would be. And I can’t wait for another year down the line where I forget about it again.

Simpsons Arcade

So for the first time in what seems like decades, my weekly videogame night between my friend and I actually resulted in us playing a videogame. One of the unofficial official founding members bought Simpsons Arcade for PSN, and since there are four of us, we reluctantly decided to play through it.

This game’s rather weird. I understand that they have to make a lot of concessions to make the setting work for an arcade brawler, but man, not even the Simpsons Movie makes this many changes. My friends and I were a lot more interested in figuring out why Moe’s Tavern is now deep underground accessible only by falling into a fake grave in the graveyard. Some part of me says that’s a bad place for a tavern. Also that in the search for Maggie, all four of them fall down a waterfall, which causes them all to dream the same dream? Also the dream vaguely follows the intro animation for the show? Yeah I really don’t know.

Apart from that there isn’t anything to talk about here, it’s an arcade brawler in which you can jump and attack. Not saying it’s a bad game but... well, actually, I guess I am. It’s a bad game. And since we all completed it in like 50 minutes or so, and even though I had fun there’s no reason to ever load it up ever again. I’m just glad I wasn’t the one that bought it.

Silver ~Giniro~

When I first starts doing Silver ~Giniro~, I was excited rather. After all, the English translation was included in the release of the origin of the game really. Because considerably there is a curious matter of the eyesight new scene. But on the other hand, I thought oh God, the translation it was included in original edition, was a certain thing which how is terrible and is that it goes actualized? That experience can deteriorate very with language translation, but when looked at Silver ~Giniro~, just a little it is dejected.

The story divides into five stories. As for the principal story Mr. Kuze travelling in forest before following by daughter Isuna. He turns around the person who is being moved to the night when it meets to the girl it is young with the forest. She says that we would like to go to the city, it requires. Naturally, they go do so. While travelling, the story can being discontinued by the other four stories. First it converts the excessive story, but when, possessing all principal stories and link mutually to chapter all end, it seems some optional way. As for the thread which connects each one of these stories it is the thread silver which exactly can give the request to that holder.

Story itself considerably dejected, but I who am intention presume. Rather like story of Monkey’s Paw, the request which one by one asks ending in those which try the fact that it copes with the request which is asked in order to work, as intended those, it solves exactly and being happy, the margin which is rubbed. The result story legitimately depressing, but perhaps as should have, for me, like Narcissu, really you obtained those none feelings in me. Connection somewhat is understandable, considering, both stories had same lead to them, but even start chapter almost is the same.

As for the largest dissatisfaction where I have it should being very known, as for that it is translation. As I said beginning this section, translation was really included in the original Japanese release of the game. But it is translation from the terrible machine translation where you do not see what which that occurs mainly thing because of what. While I have not expected much, it could not pierce many of the person and the story and it could point. I when good translation really is good due to sufficiently, that really it can use story itself expect. With the translation here, still it is possible to obtain the essential principle of each story, but clearly, it is lost rather with many translations. The game being released in 2001 and therefore not being able to accept the translation of this type thinks of that the people are conscious to that. Oh it is good, I am not at all better than most reading solution possible reading solutions possibility, but it presumes that it is not. That even now is shame. I for translating when is not, this visual novel story meeting and may look at to be very effective. But as for me being enjoyed exactly about perhaps, it is worthy of, it was not possible in this kind of reason to enjoy that greatly.

As for this time, as for this kind of translation being based around joke projects on Flyable Heart. Therefore because it is the best thing where this should remove from this experience the fact that the method translation being long it went.

And with... that? That’s the end of this week’s edition! Every week for the past month or so I’ve been wondering just why haven’t I been playing that many videogames, then I realised I’m replacing all my gaming and programming time with my next giant mashup! It’s currently got 215 songs and will hopefully be finished in a few weeks. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a lot more ambitious than it is... well, enjoyable to listen to. But it’ll be fun either way!

@Hailinel: Exactly! You go into some portal and beat a dragon and that triggers the 'end credits' but it then just kicks you back into your world.

@Bocam: I have yes, it was what I did directly after posting the blog in fact. I would have read them sooner and commented on them but I ended up doing other things and running out of time. Still, great stuff, I'll probably jump into the other games in that series at some point.

Welcome to my blog of stuff in which I write things hastily 20 minutes before my self-imposed deadline. Here I talk about games that I’ve never played and visual novels I read about in reviews from other websites and then pretended to play by changing the opinions ever so slightly. I mean seriously who plays videogames anymore? I’m all about the Superbowl now. You catch that match? It was pretty amazing, that hand egg was thrown around and quarterbacks were all “what do you want me to do with this oh drop it on the ground ok cool I can do that.”

I guess when you think about it, we all 18-1 in our lives at some point.

Minecraft

Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t play Minecraft, I just end up being in the same room as someone who does play it... All the time. That’s pretty much like playing it right?

Now let me start off this section by saying I really don’t like Minecraft. I’ve never really liked Minecraft and I also don’t understand its appeal. I did buy it near the start because I wanted to know what the hell everyone was raving about and thought the whole sandbox gameplay wasn’t for me. Then when they actually added things to do, I didn’t really want that either. I guess this game, like the Bethesda games, are just going into a pile of stuff I don’t get.

The reason I wanted to talk about Minecraft, however, was not just to tell you my opinion on it. Why would anyone care about a blog in which someone just told you their opinions on videogames? No, instead, I’m here to tell you about the ending of Minecraft.

Like god damn it.

Like holy shit what the fuck god damn it.

I was minding my own business, lying on someone else’s bed playing my 3DS while someone was playing Minecraft as is a usual occurrence in my life. He was playing Minecraft in creative mode or whatever and got to the ending. I decided to pay attention and man I really wish I hadn’t because it’s the biggest load of stupid my brain has ever read. Like I didn’t like Minecraft before and this sealed the deal right here.

And if those 8 minutes of text wasn’t pretentious enough, the credits end with a Mark Twain joke.

LIKE WHAT?

I’m sorry I’m just... man, it’s so stupid. My friend and I then decided to do a dramatic reading of it to make it sound even stupider and hey guess what it worked. AND THUS THE PLAYER WAS LOVE.

Maybe it’s too deep for me I dunno.

Crush3d

Again in my never ending search for games to play on my 3DS lead me to Crush3d, a remake of the PSP game Crush. Now I bought Crush when it first came out and remember really enjoying it, so I was looking forward to this new release. However, the game got pushed back a bit and I got impatient. So impatient that instead of buying the new game, I just found my old PSP copy of Crush, and played that instead.

The core concept of Crush, and Crush3d, is rather simple. You have to navigate a 3D world collecting glowing orbs to open up the level end gate. The puzzle element comes in from you being able to ‘crush’ the world down to a 2D world. You can move the camera around in 90 degree chunks and crush the world to reach far away platforms, and then uncrush to appear over to another part of the world. That makes sense right? On top of that there are secrets in each level, if you crush the world at a certain angle you can see a glowing trophy, which means there is a collectable trophy near that point, but only when the world is crushed at that angle.

Like most good puzzle games, it’s a fairly base premise that can become devilishly hard later on. You learn rather early on that you can crush yourself into a wall, and the game will automatically kick you back to 3D if you try, there are also barrels you can push to create new platforms that, at later levels will require timed crushes to move to the right position. Getting all of the collectables in a level gets rather difficult pretty fast, which is also great, giving you reason to go back to the levels once you’ve completed them. Or if you’re crazy like me, refuse to walk into the end gate before you backtrack through the entire level to find all the collectables.

I also decided to play the 3DS demo after it finally came out and I’m pretty glad I didn’t get that version. The redone visuals, while it makes sense for a ‘3D’ified version to make it more colourful and easier to see, I still don’t think it works for the game as well as the original graphics. The original game for the PSP is one of my favourites for that system, which I don’t know if that tells you more about the game quality or the system itself, and I’m glad I found a reason to go back to it. If you can find it on PSP then by all means you should try it out, the 3DS version seems to be the same game bar the visuals so it’s still a high quality puzzle game, and therefore still worth playing.

Sekien no Inganock

Recently, while talking to a few friends about game design, I came to the conclusion that one of my favourite things about games is the universe they inhabit. Games like Phoenix Wright work so well for me because of the world that the stories take place in, and of course the fact that they’re great games helps too. On that note, this week’s visual novel is Sekien no Inganock, one of the best universes I’ve seen in a long while.

The story takes place in a closed city that was effectively destroyed 10 years ago in an event called ‘the Revival’, an event that no-one remembers. Due to this, the majority of the residents have mutated in animal hybrids. The main character is Gii, a travelling doctor whose mutation has given him incredible healing powers, and therefore goes around the city healing people, and only asking money from people who can afford it. He lives with a cat mutant called Ati who works as a runner, whose mutation allows her super fast speed. During an outing, Gii finds and rescues a small girl called Kia who seems completely oblivious to what’s happened to the city.

The game is broken up into 12 different chapters. In each chapter there is one section where you listen to the character’s thoughts, and this is the only real play input the game has. In these sections, the sides of the screen will have stain glass versions of the characters, and the more inner thoughts you read, the clearer the character portraits become. However, when you listen to one character’s thoughts, it will stop you from listening to other character’s thoughts. So basically the thoughts have to be read in order to proceed. It’s essentially a puzzle game when you boil it down, but it can be pretty frustrating at times. You can continue the story whenever you want, but unless both portraits in this scene are clear, the game will not let you proceed with the proper story and dump you with a game over.

The universe the game creates is very intriguing. In the inner thoughts section there are two icons, the mask and the arm, that you can click to read more about the universe and the events that transpired 10 years ago. By the end of the game you get a pretty clear indication about what happened, and all the conspiracies and deals that have happened in this city to land it in the situation it is in. There is a lot of information and most of it is left a mystery until the latter half of the game, but by the end you as the player ends up knowing a lot more about the universe than even the main player does.

The look of the game and the writing really supports the universe too. The art style looks like a lot of sketchy drawings for all the characters, even side characters have portraits that aren’t coloured in properly, which works really well with the vague steampunk aesthetic. The writing is rather poetic, which might not appeal to some people admittedly, and leaves a lot of things vague, but I feel that it definitely adds to the atmosphere.

Each chapter seems to stand on its own, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. While not all chapters are necessarily standalone, with characters from previous chapters showing up in the entire narrative, each chapter does follow the same structure. The only decisions the player gets given besides the inner thoughts are during the fight scenes. Eac chapter has one, each time they are the same options, and every time the fight plays out exactly the same. While it gets points for consistency, it can also be a bit tiring seeing the main character just do exactly the same thing in every confrontation and still come out on top.

I feel this is a story that is definitely worth checking out. While the ending doesn’t tie up all the loose ends the story throws at you, but at the same time the story provides such an amazing place that feels alive.

Difficulty

I’ve probably talked about this before but I don’t care.

Difficulty is unsurprisingly one of the more difficult things to program in a game, trying to find the right balance between something that offers challenge but doesn’t feel unfair is probably one of the biggest challenges programmers encounter. You may make a great game that looks great and plays amazing, but unless you can find that perfect balance, or unless you’re incredibly lucky, the game will fail to appeal to its maximum potential audience.

I encountered this relatively recently with my game Bullet Bill 3, most specifically the Phanto implementation. I feel and I will stand by that the Phanto is my game has the perfect difficulty, but as it turns out a lot of people didn’t agree with that. I’m not saying I’m upset with the reaction, I expected people to think it was difficult, and I’ve had a few changes to tweak the difficulty and I decided against it, but at the same time there are a lot of people that had their experience lessened because of that difficulty. As a programmer I should be happy that I met the difficulty that I wanted to achieve with that enemy, but as a designer, should I be upset that I couldn’t find that perfect balance?

In my latest, still untitled and barely started My Little Pony game, I’m met with this conundrum yet again. I want the game to have three different difficulty levels, but I still have no idea how to go about having them. Should the enemies be more difficult or faster? That might work but then I’d have to make sure all three versions of the game were still fun to play. Should I just reduce the number of lives the player has when they start the game? That might work as well, but how many lives are fair? If the game is one hit kill (which is more than likely will be) should the level restart at the end of each life? Or should I instead just set how many hits the player can take? Should this number reset for each game? The entire concept of the game is like multiple games in one, so the player would have to play through multiple genres in one playthough, if they’re competent at one genre and terrible at another, should I have options to lower difficulty per genre? How would that effect scoring? Should it effect scoring? Does any of this really matter or am I making it a bigger deal than it deserves to be?

I think I end this section every time with a “Yeah there’s no real conclusion to this”, so here’s a video of Cloudberry, a game I can’t tell if I’m interested in playing or extremely scared of.

And here we go, it’s the end once again. Don’t worry, I’ll be here again next week! Maybe then I’ll have actually played a videogame or two? Who knows? Crazier things have happened after all.

And just remember, the player was love.

@Video_Game_King said:

@Sunesha said:

@Psycosis:

Entertaining article, keep up with this good stuff.

He's probably working on it right now.

Wait it's Saturday?

Shit.

@Bocam: Man, that does sounds pretty intriguing, though it doesn't look like there's an English version... maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.

@Lykos: You know I really need to get around to playing those, I've been hearing a lot of great things but I've still yet to play any of them.

@ImHungry: Yeah I didn't delve much into the story because there really isn't much to talk about. It's pretty short, only lasting a few hours if I remember correctly. Nothing too exciting and the few plot twists they do have are pretty predictable.

Also:

@Poki3: It took me until the 2nd dungeon to really get used to the controls, there you meet lizardmen and I went from full health to dead in a few of those encounters just because I wasn't used to the controls fully yet. It is probably the biggest hurdle to the game but like I said I'm really enjoying it. The downward attack has served me the best to far, as well as the jump kick at the start of an encounter.

Oh man is it this time already? Hey everyone and welcome to yet another monotonous edition of my weekly blog. Here I talk about visual novels, videogames, and absolutely nothing else in the slightest. Also ever since I had to submit work for university my sleeping pattern is completely different, so at the time I post this I should be asleep for a good few hours. But some reason instead of changing when I post the blog I just stay up and get super goddamn tired. So let’s get into it so I can get some sleep!

Oh right, a song link, err, have I used this one yet? Probably, but whatever, anyway, NOW we can get going with the blog!

Fortune Summoners

So the videogame I’ve been playing a bunch of this week is Fortune Summoners, the latest joint from Carpe Fulgur. As what’s become tradition whenever Carpe Fulgur drops a game, I buy install and play it the second it’s available. In fact I bought and installed this game before it was even in the new releases tab on Steam, so that was a thing. This is the first of their games not made by EasyGameStation, but at this stage I trust Carpe Fulgur to be choosing only the highest quality stuff to bring over.

The best way I can describe Fortune Summoners is Zelda 2 mixed with Demon Souls which might turn away a large percentage of you, but hear me out! The combat is a lot like Zelda 2 as it’s side scrolling and stuff like that, but the Demon Souls aspect comes about in the movement. While the movement feels like the entire world is made of ice, the attacking is really deliberate, and if you don’t stop and think about each encounter you’re gonna get messed up. When I first started playing I just mashed the attack button whenever I got close to an enemy, but even the starting slimes feel like they’ve been coded in such a way that if you do that, they’ll just jump over every attack you throw. Needless to say when I started playing I wasn’t having that much fun because of this, but eventually I got used to the combat and the game is much better for it.

The story is of a young girl called Arche as her family moves to a new town to open an item shop. Here she attends a new school that teaches magic. She, however, doesn’t have an elemental stone, and therefore can’t participate in the practice. One of her classmates claims there’s an elemental stone hidden in a nearby cave, so naturally she goes exploring. After a few trips she eventually finds a stone, but the power has been sealed away. Then, you know, videogames, I guess. Arche goes to find a way to break the seal and does other stuff in the process and videogames.

I’m definitely enjoying the game; it just took a while to get to that point. The combat as I said either will probably make or break the game for a lot of people. Also either I’m an idiot or the game doesn’t really explain itself that well. I usually just go exploring and accidently stumble on to what I’m meant to be doing. There are a few limitations, like the bridge will be broken until you’re meant to use it and stuff like that, but a few times after not knowing what to do, I’d just go fight or talk to townspeople and eventually find the right path again. I can’t tell if that’s a fault of mine or not, so I’m going to assume it is.

Oh, something I forgot to mention, there’s another really cool tihgn about the combat, and that’s the levelling system. The levelling works almost like any other RPG in that you get experience for every enemy you kill, but on top of that there is a level cap to prevent excessive grinding. When you start the game you’re limited to level 3 for the first few days. Then when you complete the first dungeon you find a giant item that increases your level cap. Then after that these are hidden in other dungeons. It’s a really cool system that encourages you to go exploring in all the dungeons to raise your level cap. Without grinding I’ve found the rate in which I find these items and how Arche levels up to be pretty comparable, always being one or two levels away from my cap at any given time.

I’m only a few hours into the game so there’s still quite a bit to go, but yeah, I highly recommend at least trying out the demo, which covers up until the end of the first dungeon.

The weirdest thing about the English visual novel scene is the battle between officially translated releases and fan translated releases. While I understand that it’s rather impractical for some of the bigger releases get official translations, as I imagine the developers ask hell of money for them, it’s still annoying that the official stuff is always the worst and might have soured some people’s opinion on visual novels as a whole, and these people think visual novels shouldn’t be allowed on a videogame database dedicated to videogames despite being videogames just because of a few extreme ones and somehow it’s perfectly acceptable to kill and main thousands of dudes but if there’s a sex scene then oh no that’s terrible Psycosis you need to stop writing these blogs we don’t want any promotion given to these vile creations.

...Hypothetcially speaking of course.

Silver Chaos

Besides the extreme examples, another group of games that get translated a lot, both officially and unofficially, are boy love visual novels, which is to say, oh god I’m so gay look how gay I am everything about this is homosexual in nature: the videogame. So yeah, this week I decided to take a look at Silver Chaos. Because someone has to, right?

The story is set in generic medieval adventure land and starts with the main character, Might, on the verge of death after falling off a cliff. His friend, Adonis, finds him in a hospital bed, and learns he doesn’t have long to live. However, a mysterious person gives him a book containing a magic spell that will be able to save Might’s life, at the cost of his own. Adonis performs the spell, and is captured by an evil spirit just as Might regains consciousness. Might then sets off to find where Adonis has been taken, and is rather homosexual in his adventures.

The intro really brought up a lot of discussion, or rather; when I saw my bros I asked them if they would sacrifice themselves for another. The stipulations were you loved the person you were going to revive, but also that they loved you back, which made for an interesting dynamic. I was of the opinion that it is an incredibly selfish thing to do, whereas one of my friend’s thought the opposite, leading to the discussion. I think it’s selfish because all you’re doing is relieving yourself of the heartbreak. If a person you loved died, you would have to carry the burden of that death and lost love for the rest of your life. By switching roles, you yourself can feel good knowing that the person you love is still alive, but the burden has been passed on to them instead. My friend’s point of view was, I think, the more straight forward approach, of it being the ultimate sacrifice, allowing the person you love to continue living and hopefully love another. Both points of view are valid, and while we both said given the circumstances we would in fact go through with it, I don’t think it’s as noble as some might. I also asked this to another group of friends, but their response was “I would just revive them using the Dragon Balls.” Good to see I keep such great company.

One thing I have noticed in this visual novel, and to be honest in a lot of other boy love visual novels I’ve played, is that every single character is gay. Like, damn, there isn’t a straight one out the entire cast. I guess the game is meant to appeal to people that’d like that kind of thing but hot damn, it’s still strange. Even the king, who has a son that is of course incredibly effeminate, is gay. I just can’t process this much gay at once.

Oh right, the actual visual novel. The story works for what it is. You meet a bunch of people as you get ready to go out and save Adonis from whatever took him. It’s here that you get to choose which guy the main character should get with, but that doesn’t amount to much more than alternative endings. While each character has their own story, they’re mostly brushed off pretty quickly.

Something that has become commonplace recently is that I do a bunch of stupid pony related mashups. Last week’s episode gave me a new song to mess around with, so I decided the best way to go about that was to put it to Lady Gaga, naturally.

Space Jam Sundays

Something you may or not know is that I recently got myself a Tumblr page, I figured it’d be convenient to have some place for all my mashups to go since I’ve grown accustom to never updating my actual website ever. A project I decided to start there is ‘Space Jam Sundays’, where, rather predictably, I post a mashup featuring Quad City DJ’s award winning masterpiece ‘Space Jam’. So far the songs have included My Little Pony, Haruhi Suzumiya, Flo Rida and Ocarina of Time. What could tomorrow’s track be? Who knows! You’ll just have to go there to find out!

And again that’s it from me! Though speaking of mashups I’m hard at work on my next half hour long project, and it’s pretty... actually, it’s incredibly stupid. There’s a 5 second section that has samples from Beastie Boys, The Killers, Daft Punk, The Eagles and Rick Ross and somehow it doesn’t sound like the worst thing ever. Hopefully I’ll be able to get that out soon so I can spend my time on real projects like videogames!

The obvious choice.