tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83817221902739552912024-03-14T03:36:43.178+00:00Rage QuitYsanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17289592007515941857noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8381722190273955291.post-71192290465337969802014-05-14T22:25:00.000+01:002014-05-14T22:25:36.990+01:00Magical Space Ninja Adventures<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Warframe. The game about space ninjas going round to the space houses of two races and slaughtering them because some female head told them to. It's utterly preposterous, and yet, to date, I have spent one hundred and ten hours of my life dedicated to the slaughter of millions in the name of epic loot.<br />
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I can't remember why I decided to download this game, it's an impulse lost in the mists of time, but I knew very little about it. I knew it was free to play, and I knew it had guns, my instinct was this was some kind of death match arena game and I am really not peachy keen on them, but I clicked that download button anyway.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, I have a stag head</td></tr>
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When I first booted up the game, I was taken through a simple tutorial, I was still under the impression at that point that I would be in a firefight to the death with twitchy, sleep deprived teenagers within minutes, and then the stage select screen pops up. There you are, crouching down before the entire solar system. You are prompted to select Mercury and work outwards to the Post Neptunian Bodies, a loading screen appears, you drop into a space station, and then you are a space ninja my boy.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Solar System is you Oyster</td></tr>
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The premise of Warframe is simple. Undertake missions, collect credits and materials, craft weapons and warframes. Rinse, repeat. You level up simply by using your weapons or abilities, and it is this that hooks you in, each time that bar fills, you gain customisation points to add mods to your weapons and frames adding shields, health, damage, status effects and more to develop your one Tenno killing machine. It's this simple mechanic that keeps you going. The missions are short enough to not feel overly long (although it pushes it in later areas) so when you need those few extra credits or that little bit more experience to push you to the next level you find yourself playing again.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I shot a space ray, through the mouth, and stuck him to a door.</td></tr>
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As of right now, I have five Warframes built and pretty much at maximum level along with a small armoury of weapons. Come the weekend, I will have two more fresh Warframes, two new sets of abilities to play with and the cycle starts all over again. It's that push to get your next new thing that keeps you playing, and the ticking clock of the build timer that will keep you coming back.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's still in open beta remember</td></tr>
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But, it's not without it's problems. As I mentioned, I have 4 and a half days behind me on this game and I am starting to run out of new areas to unlock. Well, I say new areas, it gets to a point where Saturn looks the same as Mercury but with a cooler colour palette, repetition is the thing in this game, you start to recognise the tilesets and just running the game on autopilot. There are a few individual areas, Earth, Jupiter and my personal favourite, Phobos, but most of the time you are just running through the same tired space station. The game is still in open beta, so hopefully by the time it is fully released, there will be a bit more of a unique air to these areas.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Please, don't disturb my friend, he's dead tired.</td></tr>
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It also seems to lack any endgame content, there isn't really a big boss to fight against to end this conflict, just a tonne of fights against the opposition generals. There is maybe one that could be classed as a final boss, but the problem there is he is designed to be taken down in a group, and if you are running solo, relying on other roaming players to fill your party, you won't be taking him on any time soon as there is no way to fill up your party outside of inviting your bestest buddies.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's almost like a second game to find all the bugs.</td></tr>
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In the end though, I still keep going back, that ticking clock that will signal the completion of another way to kill some AI, or that alert which has a rare mod up for grabs, or getting that next level so you have enough points to equip that next mod to make you even harder. Like I said, it has it's hooks and it has enough there to keep enticing you back, and the developers are constantly adding to the game and evolving it, giving you more carrots on a stick to run after.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't go losing your head</td></tr>
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Now if you will excuse me, there appears to be an alert in Uranus.....<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05178109093566813496noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8381722190273955291.post-24661831280352055772014-05-13T22:20:00.001+01:002014-05-13T22:20:54.181+01:00Uta no Prince-sama Debut<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I remember when I really looked forward to the 2nd installment of the all singing, all dancing Princes of Song. The 1st game had an over-the-top craziness, which was mainly attributed to the eccentric Principle, Shining Saotome, to an otherwise fairly regular high school romance scenario with a run of the mill cast. The music mini game was simple but quite addictive and provided hours of fun in its own right. All in all, it was a great who because it knew who the intended audience were and how to mix wacky humour with heart warming moments and gushing romance. Awesome.</div>
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So, how on Earth did Broccoli (the studio) get it so wrong with Debut? Firstly, the fun was knocked out of it with so few Shining appearances, no HAYATO and the game generally took itself too seriously. Secondly, the scripts were long and boring and had our main heroine basically doing nothing but sitting idly, watching her other half trying to solve some out of the blue problem which you don't care about. Sometimes, it feels like any character or relationship development at the end of the 1st game is just hurled somewhere and forgotten. Other times the whole character has been stripped of any personality they had and reconstructed so they can squeeze in as much implied homo-homo as they can. As a result, the romantic instances Haruka has with her boyfriend just doesn't have the same heart fluttering gush that was there in the 1st game, it was lukewarm at best.</div>
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The game also struggled to attend to an extended cast of 4 additional sempai to the original 7 princes. They crop up often just to make things difficult for Haruka and her princes, which is very annoying. They also come with all their emotional baggage and they are not dateable choices so what's the point of painstakingly going through all their dialogues and backstories?!</div>
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The music mini game was still fun but Broccoli has been really cheap and reused existing material they had such as the B side of the character songs from the CDs of the anime. The game sprites also used the same poses albeit with different outfits but even some of the backgrounds are the same as in Repeat.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CMg3TOmn9b0/U3KLyGj5qdI/AAAAAAAAFnc/K32744d3FVU/s1600/Uta.no%E2%98%86prince-sama%E2%99%AA.full.1550734.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CMg3TOmn9b0/U3KLyGj5qdI/AAAAAAAAFnc/K32744d3FVU/s1600/Uta.no%E2%98%86prince-sama%E2%99%AA.full.1550734.jpg" height="187" width="320" /></a></div>
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The bottom line is the creators have lost sight of what made the original (and Repeat which is the remake) so popular and while trying to please the BL fangirls, they ended up pleasing nobody with such boring screen writing and cringe worthy Princely homo time. I only managed to play through Masato's and half of Tokiya's route because he's not the Tokiya who we'd known and loved.<br />
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I had to quit before the PSP went flying out the window so a Rage Quit worthy 5/5.Ysanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17289592007515941857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8381722190273955291.post-51456078008141880992014-05-13T17:50:00.001+01:002014-05-14T00:36:08.722+01:00Soul of Lost Undead<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>I lit the bonfire.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i> </i>I remember having a rather profound reflective moment, shortly after I finished Dark Souls (the first). I remember telling my friend<i> </i>that I'd finally defeated Gwyn, and lit the bonfire and finished the game. I had fulfilled the "prophecy" of the Chosen Undead and rekindled the First Flame, the undead curse has been lifted(?) and the Age of Fire had been restored. The End.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>[This post contains spoilers for Dark Souls I]</b><i> </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> My friend, who had already plundered much of the game's depths, then proceeded to explain the finer points of the plot to me. Told me things that I hadn't noticed before, or thought to question. It made me realise that I could have decided to end the game differently, after defeating Gwyn. I had a choice that I didn't even realise was available because I was too busy just following the game's objectives. The most interesting things about the game's setting and plot are subtle and, half the time, outright hidden from the player.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> You see, you start out being told that you must restore order to the land by doing X, Y and Z to ultimately reignite the First Fire, which had started to wane. Restore power to the rulers and save the humans, who have become afflicted with a curse that turned them into undead. There are a series of events, partway through the game, that you can trigger that will lead to the player meeting someone who tells you that, actually, the fire is meant to go out. It is the natural course of things for the Age of Fire to end, and the curse is a sign that ushers in the Age of Dark, where humans will rule the land</span>.<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And this was a secret that the game kept from me by playing on the expectations of gamers, I felt. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It worked on me. It wasn't until my friend revealed the hidden plot to me that I'd realised I was merely a pawn, manipulated by the people in power to maintain the status quo because they didn't want to let anyone else have their position. I'd unwittingly consigned humanity to being forever bottom-rung of Lordran. And I really didn't like it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I don't possess any kind of traditionist mentality. I don't believe that "because it's how we've always done it" or "this is how it's always been" are at all valid reasons for things to not change. I believe in change and progress. So the fact that I was basically tricked into restoring things to the way they were, preventing what would have otherwise been a natural (possibly positive) progression of power towards humanity, didn't sit well with me at all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It kind of reminded me of a significant portion of my adolescent life - blindly doing things because it seemed like what I was supposed to be doing, and not really contemplating that an alternative may have existed, let alone one I might have been happier with. But, no, It was just: </span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Be good at school and be good at exams. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Do well and go to university and get a degree. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> ???? </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Profit. </span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Except I find myself being left at #3 and have not quite worked out how to get to #4.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> What are some of your most profound videogame moments, friends?</span></div>
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StormTechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06237389475155151037noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8381722190273955291.post-90054541685304841552014-05-12T18:29:00.002+01:002014-05-12T18:29:24.879+01:00BrokonoeBlazblue: Chrono Phantasma is the 5th instalment of the Blazblue series, and all things considered, it's probably the best version so far. They reworked the guard break and burst mechanics, added a ton of new content, and spiced things up with the new Overdrive mode which gives characters all sorts of new tools to play with. It's an all around great fighting game and I love playing it, but at present it suffers from one humungous and glaring problem, and that's the DLC character Kokonoe. <br />
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<a href="http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/images/thumb/4/4e/BBCP_Kokonoe_Portrait.png/391px-BBCP_Kokonoe_Portrait.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/images/thumb/4/4e/BBCP_Kokonoe_Portrait.png/391px-BBCP_Kokonoe_Portrait.png" height="320" width="208" /></a><br />
As a character in the Blazblue universe, Kokonoe has been present since the very beginning, but it has taken 5 games for her to finally debut as a playable character. In the story she's presented as one of the world's most powerful figures, and her debut as a combatant lives up to that billing as she is by far and away the best character in the game.<br />
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In fact, I would go as far as saying that she is the <b>most broken character that has ever been in a blazblue game</b>, and in a series that has unleashed a number of extraordinarily broken characters (eg. CT's power trio of Rachel, Nu13 and Arakune) that's really saying something. Kokonoe is simply far too good and her presence damages what is otherwise a pleasingly well-balanced game. <br />
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<a href="http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/images/thumb/d/d8/BBCP_Kokonoe_632146D.png/800px-BBCP_Kokonoe_632146D.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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It's hard to point to a single thing that makes Kokonoe broken, but her most major sin is her blatantly overpowered Black Hole super, which belongs in a game like Marvel vs. Capcom rather than Blazblue. This super is a completely unblockable attack that traps the opponent, and leaves them prone to a high damage follow-up combo. The presence of unblockables is always a contentious issue in fighting games, but what's key here is that Kokonoe has setups that enable her to land a guaranteed Black Hole after scoring a knockdown.<br />
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<a href="http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/images/thumb/d/d8/BBCP_Kokonoe_632146D.png/800px-BBCP_Kokonoe_632146D.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/images/thumb/d/d8/BBCP_Kokonoe_632146D.png/800px-BBCP_Kokonoe_632146D.png" height="156" width="320" /></a></div>
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If you then combine this with her disproportionately high damage output, and her ability to convert stray hits into huge damage from anywhere on the screen (her 'abare' to use the Japanese parlance), then you have a character who can potentially win rounds from a single touch. I played an infuriating set of games a couple of weeks ago against a Kokonoe player who had a questionable neutral game, but he happened to know a couple of combos and a Black Hole setup, so despite perfecting him 4 times in 7 games, I was still losing rounds just because of that one single touch of death.<br />
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And even without Black Hole, Kokonoe is still unquestionably the best character in the game, possessing as she does a dominant neutral game, with huge projectiles and gravity gizmos to ruin the opponent's spacing; and an extremely strong mixup game, with long range low attacks, and two fast overheads that both lead to far too much damage. She has no unfavourable matchups, and makes a significant chunk of the cast completely irrelevant.<br />
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I have no doubt that if things had continued, Kokonoe would have seen a ban from all competitive play, but thankfully Arcsys have saved us from this inevitable doom, and have swiftly deployed a balance update to Japanese arcades to address the issue. BBCP 1.1 delivers a <a href="http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlazBlue:_Chrono_Phantasma_1.10_patch_notes#Kokonoe">laundry list of nerfs</a> to Kokonoe, directly nerfing her black hole setups, eliminating her instant overhead, removing some useful attack chains, lowering her damage output, and generally reducing the usefulness of her gravity gizmos.<br />
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Yet in spite of all this, early 1.1 tier lists still have Kokonoe firmly in 1st place, and from video footage she's still a dominant powerhouse. Just goes to show how extraordinarily good she is in 1.0 that they can bash her around with the nerfbat and she still comes out on top. Should they have done more?<br />
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Elsewhere in 1.1, the entire cast has had the customary rebalance, with weaker characters getting some love, and the traditional top tier quartet of Valkenhayn, Taokaka, Hazama and Hakumen all seeing nerfs. Hazama's changes are entirely focussed around his damage output, which was probably a bit too high in 1.0, especially for a zoning type character, but I think they went a bit far with the changes to Jayoku Houtenjin, and the j.C hitstun changes which make his air combos less reliable.<br />
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The big winners in 1.1 are Azrael, Carl and Rachel. Azrael was already super scary in 1.0, and with his changes he's now a complete a monster up close. Rachel was already secretly toptier in 1.0 and saw only buffs, ensuring she's back at the top of the field for the first time since CT.<br />
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And as for Carl, he's undoubtedly a difficult character to balance since he is by far the most complex character in the game, and possibly one of the most challenging to play in the history of fighting games. Arcsys clearly want to ensure that he's worth the effort to learn, and with the buffs to Nirvana's uptime and the more lenient combos, the Carl masters are going to see their efforts justly rewarded.<br />
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1.1 is due to hit consoles some time in May. Although I'm sad about Hazama finally getting nerfed off top tier, I'll also be glad to see the back of 1.0 Brokonoe. Get nerfed skank.JayLabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07991812688374647718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8381722190273955291.post-86386107527399528042014-05-05T18:56:00.001+01:002014-05-05T18:56:17.526+01:00Rage quitI raged and then I quitJayLabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07991812688374647718noreply@blogger.com0