Correct! It's that time again, as I have not been able to keep a steady flow of blogs going at all. Again my main intent is to actually do that, AND on time instead of it being an extra day late to boot. If I keep having to bring that up though I'll start sounding like a broken record, so lets not dwell on my procrastination and incompetence, cause I fucking played video games and I want to write about them. This week I 117% Dust: An Elysian Tail and recap the return of the Midnight Channel. So without further writing anything else for this part:

Dust: An Elysian Tail

To be completely honest before Dust came out I completely wrote off the rest of the Summer of Arcade. I had no interest in paying $15 for a very disappointing re-imagining of something I can just play on my Dreamcast, and with all the F2P stuff I already play and is coming out Hybrid has no shot of sticking. Deadlight being lackluster didn't help, nor does not owning a Kinect, yet when Dust rolled out on the XBLA I decided to give the trial a shot and see where it would go from there. I downloaded it while watching Netflix and it eventually finished up in the middle of a show so I decided to wait until the show finished up. Upon that thought Dust had a different idea all together and it went a little something like this:

>Dust has finished downloading

>Awesome I'll just-

>Dust has finished downloading

>Okay I got it the first ti-

>Dust has finished downloading

>Okay what's going on I'm checking the active downloads why is it only at seven perce-

>Dust has finished downloading

>FINE I'LL JUST REMOVE IT FRO-

>Cannot remove from your active downloads

>GODDAMNI-

>Dust has finished downloading

Okay so we weren't off to a good start but Dust wasn't to blame for this, as watching Netflix at the same time caused a rip in the Xbox Space Continuum that caused Dust to completely go bananas to the point I couldn't even access my account on Xbox.com, an error message would just pop up saying "You're not supposed to be seeing this page!". Well after all that was said and done I was eventually able to take it off my active downloads and re-download it without any issue, and without watching shit on Netflix. Never watch shit on Netflix if you're downloading stuff apparently, or if you want to get dangerous go ahead and do it.

Anyway I got around to booting up the demo and played through it and while I wasn't fully convinced I was intrigued by what had transpired before me. I do love the concept of a Metroidvania type game, even though the only Metroidvania game I ever played at that point was Harmony of Despair, something my friends while playing HoD will not let me forget as they keep asking:

"Hey man you've played Such and Such right?"

"NO"

So after the demo had passed I waited a day to ponder on the purchase, then eventually made the plunge and put down my $15. Now initially I was a little bit bothered by the art style simply because back in my WoW days I rolled with a few people in which the style does appeal to because well... you know, and if they ever found out after all the ragging I gave them about it then well... you know. Not that I don't find the art not appealing because it chooses to be that, but because well... that community from most of my experience has been sexually deviant, including said people I hung out with playing MMOs, which made the Champions Online phase really fucking weird (Don't ask, I was a giant robot and wasn't one of the many Animals or Demons). Yet I don't find this game unappealing in any way since hey, I got past it with Star Fox and the like, why should I have a problem with this? In the end I don't, and besides some of the character designs looking a little generic, I think Fidget is one of the most adorable fucking things I've ever seen (partly due to the voicework as well). As soon as you can get past that barrier, atleast from the outside looking in perspective, the game itself is actually quite the celebration of the Metroidvania.

As you make your way through the game with Dust and Fidget you start running into a lot of what you expect to see in this type of game. Plenty of areas you'll end up backtracking to, breakable walls, wall chickens, it's all pretty much there. Even the game knows it's pretty much there as it is a bit self aware of what is actually going on. Fidget occasionally making an observation on how ridiculous such a mundane task is causing you trouble, the part where Dust tries to wall grab before he even has the Wall Grab ability, the fact the wall chicken is straight up called Wall Chicken. Though eventually you'll see it disappear from the main quest, a lot of it still resides in the many side quests you'll be off doing. In fact if I recall correctly the main quest starts off as "Oh hey this is a video game and you press these buttons to do stuff" to start you off, but as soon as you're out of The Glade it completely drops that attitude. It meshes both tones into a nice combination that even though you'll find the gags breaking the fourth wall a bit still contains it into a compelling story with you still caring what happens to Dust and Fidget.

Even beyond the pokes at the Metroidvania stuff, there's even more expanding beyond SotN style Castlevania and of course the friends, which by now you should know are mostly comprised of fellow XBLA indie game characters like Meatboy. As you go about finding and freeing them from their cages, you'll be awarded with a permanent health boost, and if you can collect all 12, a nice surprise at The Sanctuary awaits you. All of these things make this game have a whole lot of charm and it most certainly helps you get through it a bit because even though playing on Tough, there really isn't that much of a challenge once you get the Aerial Dust Storm and the rest of Fidget's spells. The crafting system also seems to be a little bit less than desired as I actually ran through 70% of the game without having to switch out the augment on my sword, not because I chose to, but because I never really found a good upgrade outside of what I had. The Difficulty curve eventually does kick up a little bit as there will be enemies that eventually block your attacks, but they're way too late to the party as you should be able to have Fidget electrocute pretty much anything that gets in your way. If you didn't have the Aerial Dust Storm the game would require you to actually do more work, it even makes a few of the other movement abilities useless just because of the distance you can cover with it. Aside from some of the problems this game has, I can proudly say I enjoyed this game from start to full completion, and if you can give the game a look, it's been one of my favorites this year by far. Also the people who provided the voicework for this game should receive more work after Dust, a lot of these dudes have been on Newgrounds for the longest time, and it'd be nice to start expanding the talent pool on voiceovers. Not to bag on the professionals, but everyone is starting to sound the same in video games, and that honestly creeps me out than animal people at this point.

Bearsona 4 Arena

Me and my friends were waiting for this game pretty much the first day we found out about it. Cause goddamn, we liked BlazBlue, but fuck most of the cast, fuck the crazy unbalanced tiers, and pretty much for me fuck everything but Makoto at this point. The return of the Persona 4 crew along with Akihiko, Mitsuru and Aigis pretty much just trumps anything Arc can do with the next BlazBlue at this point, not even adding a trap will save them this time. So enough with the badmouthing of BB and onto the return... The Return of the Midnight Channel.

Almost everyday for me aside from trying to clear Dust has been spent in Persona 4 Arena. Pretty much just training up and learning all that I can with my main man Teddie. Yeah if you couldn't tell from the title I decided to main Teddie, but I did so kind of begrudgingly at first. I was extremely interested in him prior because in fighting games, I LOVE gimmicks. Gimmicks may not win matches reliably but goddamn it its fun to catch someone with one, and Teddie is just chalk full of that stuff. Yet... What the fuck was Dave Wittenberg so busy with that he couldn't come back and breathe life into the character again? My main issue with Teddie is unfortunately the fact that he's voiced by Yuri Lowenthal, the same gent who already does Yosuke. I normally do like Yuri's voice, but his attempt at Teddie, after going back to regular ass Persona 4, honestly feels a little half-assed, and if it wasn't for the fact that I can't just turn Teddie's VO Japanese by itself means I'm just gonna have to deal with it. I mean, he's still that totally awesome bear, but when did Yosuke learn to throw his voice in a matter of two months?

Personal problems with Teddie aside he's an incredibly fun character to play. Fast, throws items, his bat, Kintoki Douji messing up people in the air, makes a lot of my friends very unhappy if I actually win. Unfortunately for me whenever we do get into a fighting game I'm about almost below on the totem pole in terms of actual play. My friend is a bit higher than me in terms of play level (to make matters worse is that he also plays Kanji, so basically just doing the same Tager shit he did in BB but with better tools), and all of his friends are pretty much above him, with one of them having fucking natural talent with whatever character he plays. I guess it could be worse though, I could still be mashing the autocombo. As I play with them more I do end up learning a lot more everytime, so with that I have been able to step up my game a bit with execution in online matches.

The other interesting thing about P4A has been it's story mode, as many who have played it should know is canonical with the events of P4. It's also clear to me that Arc System Works must have had no part in writing this story mode because given their past track record of story modes a lot of it is nonsensical bullshit. If they did though, good job, they didn't resort to time travel to fuck everything up. I haven't actually completed everyone's story, with Yukiko, Yu, Akihiko, and Aigis still untouched. I have no idea if there's some sort of post game after you do complete everyone's story, but if there isn't, everyone's own story just kind of feels weird as they cap themselves off. Mostly because of the fact the character you're playing has to get to the end in a different way, it makes some of the the characters feel off in the end, especially with Yu as he has to play backseat with everyone despite being the leader. In the end though its still a kick to see what the gang is up to before the inevitable clean slate with Persona 5. I'll probably be playing this game for a long time, probably even longer than BB:CS, cause hey, the cast doesn't suck this time.

The End!(?)

As this week comes to a close a whole new plethora of games are heading our way, it is that time again people, video game season. Next week I got some Fall of Cybertron to look forward to along with the regular sparring of P4A, maybe get back to Orcs Must Die 2 in the process. For now though, lets just take a moment and welcome back video games. Also I should probably work out my schedule for PAX, cause that's in two weeks, fucking insane just thinking about it!

SEE YOU GUYS LATER.