Much like how Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine was a precedent-setter for my own personal review in that it was something I both throughout disliked and spent too much time playing for my own good, the review I just put up for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories on here is special in its own way. You see, much like most other reviewers, standard protocol for me is to either beat a given game once or, as in Mad World's and Imagine's cases, spend enough time to get to know it well before providing my written verdict on it. But for Shattered Memories, I did neither; instead, I actually played through the game twice and upon falling in love with it during my first run, knew that was what would happen before posting a review.
It's really rare for me to a second run of a game, especially so soon after its release, but the reasoning is simple: Shattered Memories is a fairly short game, but the experience is influenced by your own dialog choices and actions (the game monitors whether you enter a bathroom in the beginning, for god's sake!) and the extent of it was enough that I wanted to do a second run so I could know its features better before confidently writing my review. It's a game that's certainly worth at least two runs for a bunch of reasons outlined in my own linked opinion already, but I thought I'd contextualize it a little bit anyway.
Well, to be honest, the point is to brazenly advertise my work in my own blog, but I digress. At least I accomplished something else while I was here.
Since I'm fairly certain that the flaming in this thread is bound to get it shut down sooner or later, I thought I would post my sentiments on the WRPG vs. JRPG "innovation debate" here for posterity's sake since it's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. In the end, it ultimately outlines my philosophy when it comes to liking and disliking games in general (read: remaining ambivalent towards classifying by genre), but it's been tweaked for that particular thread. Whether you agree with it or not is cool by me as long as you're civil about it; I just wanted my two cents posted in a more stable place since I doubt I'll be reiterating all this very soon.
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I think the question I always ask myself the most when this issue crops is why JRPGs have to inherently change on a fundamental level. The industry is often so hellbent on propagating supposed innovations that the games that merely opt to make refinements to the formula are usually seen as lesser games because they lack ambition. Maybe this is just me, but if you give me the choice of playing a game that has maybe a few innovative ideas but is lackluster on the rest of the execution versus a game that knows what it is ahead of time and works off of that base to make a really sublime experience, I'm going to go with the latter game. The thing about always focusing on innovation is that too much obsession over it on either a superficial or genuine level can make the rest of the product as a whole suffer because too much was gambled on the innovation being the game's saving grace. There are a few games that can get away with that, but those are really rare exceptions, not precedents and there are within both genres that can attest to it.
So it's with that in mind that I'll announce that trying to grab my attention by saying a game is a WRPG or JRPG has the exact same effect on me: I continue to think that the game has to do more by its own merits to sell me on it. It's why I'm ultimately just as apathetic towards games like Dragon Age and Oblivion as I am with ones like Dragon Quest and Star Ocean before playing any of them. A good game is a good game by virtue of its own qualities, not by the genre it belongs in. If a game can do that and tell me why it is a game that should matter by what it personally does, then I'm into it 100 percent; I won't care if it doesn't advance its respective genre if it just accomplishes the mission it sets out to do well. Not every game is meant to rebuild the wheel like that.
If a game isn't overly innovative, then my main concern is whether or not it can contextualize the fundamentals it works off of in ways that are compelling. If there's a problem some RPGs on both ends might really have at least for me, it's not the supposed lack of innovation at all, but rather the inability for some to take those time-tested formulas and apply them in ways that are fresh and relevant today to me. Whether that is or isn't the case for you, I don't know, but it's what's personally going on with me. That's why I love games like Persona 4 so much. It's brilliant precisely because it takes those JRPG building blocks and doesn't try to start gameplay revolutions where they aren't needed; it just takes them and uses them in ways to deeply connect with the player. It's still turn-based battling, but you're doing them with a real sense of camaraderie because of the Social Link feature. If a boss has you on the ropes, you know your good bud Chie or Yosuke will have your back and come to your rescue without you needing to ask. Even outside of battling, the storytelling methods are still standard; it's just that the execution in the setting, plot, writing, and characterization are done in ways that are really relatable to me. It all has quite a lot of impact and your antics with the main plot and side stories in the Social Links end up being tied into the battling anyway, creating this really harmonious feel between all of the components. Are any of them very inventive on their own? Not really; in fact a lot of it has already been done in previous Megami Tensei and other RPGs to varying extents, but it's the way in which it's all contextualized that matters to me. With regard to Western RPGs, the same sorts of things can be said for why I have a profound love of Morrowind to this day; as a Western RPG, it knows what it's doing and accomplishes its goals in ways I find to be really fun and immersive. It might not have the same reasons for why I love something like Persona 4, but that's the point: I love it because it operates on its own terms and does it in a manner I find to be enjoyable.
It's not just that a game has features A, B, C that matter to me, but does their execution operate in a matter that resonates with me? It's an issue that all games have to deal with equally, regardless of genre, because that's ultimately the objective they have to achieve at the end of the day. Do they all succeed? That's a matter of personal opinion. Regardless of whether a game chooses the route of innovation or of refinement, as long as it's successful on its own terms that's all that matters to me. It's why I can have love for games like Persona 4 and Morrowind, Tales of Vesperia and Fallout 3, and so many other contrasting combinations equally. They all work very well as games and I feel no need to choose between one genre over the other; I care way more about the games themselves than the genre they inhabit, since a genre can't tell me about a game's intrinsic qualities at all.
So after finishing my last final here at the university for the fall semester, Hulu was kind enough to upload the entirety of the Legend of Zelda cartoon series that played alongside the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. If only out of morbid curiosity, I watched half of the episodes with one of my roommates to kill time. My knowledge of the show up to that point was limited exclusively to Link's inclination to exclaiming, "Well excuse me, princess!" so I had no real idea what it entailed. I figured it was probably going to be bad, but in what ways exactly, I had no idea.
Let me tell you something. That show has profound undertones for a Saturday morning cartoon show from the late 80s. The plots for most of the episodes seem to be almost entirely about the hidden sexual tension in the relationship between Link, Zelda, and hell, at some points, a fairy creatively named "Sprite." Link and Zelda seem to have both just discovered the concept of puberty and being tsunderes, as they have no idea whether they genuinely want to make out with each other or get restraining orders from one scene to the next. Usually it's Link making the advances in any number of ways, from blatantly asking Zelda his version of "How about a kiss, for luck?" to just outright breaking into her room to give her some flowers. These tactics seem to work way more often than they should, since these are actually somehow enough to persuade Zelda to start the process of making out with him before something inevitably interrupts it. Still, sometimes it's Zelda who actually wants the action. In one episode, Link taking her on a picnic is enough for her to actually get on top of him and almost start doing some Sims-style love-making before, yet again, the plot actually shows up. This is all before we even include the fairy in the equation, whose ideal situation is either alone time with Link that doesn't result in her being crushed or, at minimum, a threesome with Zelda, who she just seems to barely tolerate since Link is always the apple of her eye.
I also suspect that Link is a rapist in Dic Animation's series. It feels as though there are just as many times that Link still continues his advances anyway and then gets rejected as there are when he's actually about to figure out first hand what those talks he had with mum and dad meant about birds and bees having an unholy, quasi-bestial union. To top it off, there's an episode where he teams up with a girl who doesn't speak his language and the first thing he says about the situation while moving suggestively towards her is something along the lines of "Oh, I'm sure there's still a language we could all understand!"
I'm pretty sure that all this evidence points towards the show being propaganda for abstinence and promise rings, although the writing is so bipolar about it that it might also be telling kids to just go ahead and have high school pregnancies, too. It might also be saying all of those things at the same time. With a show that actually has a guy named Bob Forward on the writing staff, anything is really possible.
Still, none of that was what I really wanted to point out about the show, but rather, the fact that the show seems to propose the one fanfiction coupling that hasn't been covered yet on fanfiction.net. I give to you, ladies and gentlemen, the KingxLink!
So what do you make of this development in the Zelda canon? Do you think Miyamoto and company will incorporate this fascinating relationship in a future Zelda game, or shall we always be left waiting, wondering if that look of disgust was the result of a swift end to what could have been a beautiful relationship? Discuss!
If you've been checking up on my blog on this site since fairly early times, you just might recall that I was invited to beta test Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine, the series' arbitrary free-to-play MMO. I signed up for the program if only out of curiosity, as I'm not out and out opposed to the idea of Shin Megami Tensei MMO. The series has enough charm and unique features that, I think, could warrant a really interesting online game if put in the hands of the right team. Hell, there's even a Persona MMO in Japan for cell phones, of all things, and it still has Social Links! Two hours after firing up the game, though, I was done. Demon recruitment was even more botched than other games that did it poorly since it was random and required nothing more than mashing a talk command and hoping for the best, something which I didn't know I was supposed to do since the game lacked any actual explanation for it at the time. I left disgusted and when I fired up the game about two months ago for laughs for my roommates, I still hated it.
I thought I was done with the game for sure at that point.
But then my roommates started playing it since I was the one to interest them in Shin Megami Tensei in the first place and, lo and behold, against my better judgment, I started forming parties with them on an almost daily basis since their presence made the levelling up process slightly more bearable. It wasn't by a whole lot, but since the game almost punishes you for playing solo, it was certainly better than what had been going on before. Still, I had no real fun with the gameplay itself the entire time; all of the good memories I do have of that game stem from messing and joking around with a surprisingly jovial community. The game that encompasses it is still pretty bad.
All of this has resulted in a review of the game that I just posted here that sums up my sentiments about the time I've had with the game. The tl;dr version: There are way worse games you could be playing, but Imagine does such little justice to both what MMOs and Megami Tensei games are that it isn't worth your attention. I may still be compelled to go back and play a bit more because my roommates are hellbent on masochistically levelling up with my help, but again, if I'm going to have any fun, the gameplay isn't where it's going to be coming from.
The moral of the story: This is probably the most time I've spent playing a game I didn't like, let alone providing a review for it. That should probably be saying something, since this is coming from someone who spent so much time with Cheetahmen II that they started making cheat codes for it. That's a fair indicator of what little sanity I possess today, I'd say.
You know, I was originally going to use this space to write about Persona 4. What it meant to me as someone who fell in love with it pre-Endurance Run, its overall impact, the whole ball of wax. Then finals season came along and deprived me of my motivation to write that at the moment, so instead, I'm presenting a special video from the sometimes magical, if overestimated, world of Japanese television. It's basically a part of a series that teaches you how to be a dick. Some of the humor is reliant on an understanding of Japanese mannerisms, but at the end of the day, such a premise is more than universal enough to make it worth posting. I almost watched no television when I was over there because, hey, I had plenty of other things to do, but I probably would have dropped everything and marathonned this series had I known it existed. I'm actually pretty tempted to import the entire DVD set of this stuff. Subtitles should show up automatically, but if not, turn on the closed caption option on the right side.
I could be using this space to brazenly promote my recent review of Parappa for the PSP, but other than that link right there, I'm not going to talk about it at all. Nope. Instead, I want to show you the cartridge art for a game I stumbled upon on eBay.
Violence Killer. As you can surmise from the subtitle, it's actually a Turok game, although I can't say for certain which one it is since I never really played any of them that much. It's attached to Seeds of Evil if only because the background art seems similar, but I'm too lazy to actually investigate it. It's natural for Japanese releases to get alternate titles to better appeal to the market and this was especially true in the N64's days. More often than not, though, as Violence Killer shows here, the titles tend to opt to be more artsy-sounding rather than sensible. Perfect Dark was a game that was going by the title Red and Black over there for a while, for example, and although that did make some sense, they ultimately ended up calling it the same name we know it as here as well.
Moral of the story? Probably none, other than how Pepsiman's quest to find cheap import games for Christmas can sometimes take interesting turns at the most random opportunities. Derive meaning from that as you will.
Oh man, it's been nearly two months since the last post? Wow, I guess I really was gone for a while. Then I came back and university life resumed within about a day after that. Then Japanese homework came in. Then Scribblenauts came out AND OH GOD MY LIFE IS BEING EATEN UP.
It's with that realization that I thought I'd take the time to quickly post another entry, if only to remind people that I am, actually, still alive and that I also wish to blatantly advertise my review of Tales of the Abyss that I just posted here on the site. I'm too mentally worn out to recap my thoughts here, but let's just say it's a pretty great game and that even if it is flawed, it may very well be worth your while to give it a whirl anyway. I hadn't played a Tales game since Symphonia, so while I still might be behind the times by going for Abyss instead of Vesparia, I'd say I still don't regret my decision to play the PlayStation 2.
So yeah. Are you guys still alive, too? I'd hope so, but you can never be completely certain.
I went to Akiharaba recently. I liked it a lot, as I mentioned in its own section in this blog entry. I'm too tired to elaborate much beyond that, so here are the pictures I've taken from the area thus far. They aren't captioned right now, so if you've got questions, feel free to shoot me them in the comments section. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did actually being in the area.
Hey guys, I'm sorry, but since I'll be in Tokyo starting next week....
...I probably won't be writing much. I've got lots of things to do there. Since I've got two classes to take at Sophia University and I'll be studying a lot, I'll probably be pretty busy. Although I'm only a second-year Japanese student and although I find the thought of having to speak the language everyday a bit scary, I still want to go. I've always lived in an English-speaking world. Even when I wasn't in Colorado, I was traveling in places like Australia and New Mexico. Both are interesting, but I can already speak the language and find it easy to do so. I want new challenges and it's because of that that I'll be going to Tokyo.
Still, I'll be writing on occasion. So what is it that you can expect?
Well, here on Giant Bomb, it'll be about things like the arcades and game shops. On the arcade front, I intend to play things like Idolmaster, Taiko Drum Master, and some fighters. Perhaps I'll even get a round in with Daigo Umehara. (I can dream, no?) And as for the game shops, there are plenty of games I want to buy over there. Hell, I even wrote a list. Even though I'll probably end up doing it in Akihabara most often, I do want to visit most everywhere and I'll be jogging my thoughts as I go along.
At my other blog on iiotenki.blogspot.com, you can expect me to write about my daily life. What that specifically entails is beyond me, but I will guarantee that there will be pictures a plenty. I think it'll make things interesting.
I'll be getting back to the States on the 21st of next month, but until then, I'll see you later. And thank you, you guys. You've been really good friends. :)
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