I’ve loved all my Playstations. In each generation I have fond memories- Final Fantasy Tactics, Shin Megami Nocturne, Demon’s Souls. But even for me the idea of a Smash Bros style brawler is ridiculous. So if that’s the case, just embrace it. Instead of playing as gimmies like Kratos, put a bunch of failed icons in there. Blasto, Bubsy (the 3-D one), whoever the samurai was from Battle Arena Toshinden, and the Infamous guy. Oh wait, Infamous is in the real one? Wow…
Author: SeeInBytes
Owen is a writer based out of Denver and currently preparing his first novel PUSH PULL for publication. In the meantime, feel free to explore his meandering thoughts, movie and videogame op-eds and situational playlists. If you know him from another life, this is a chance for exposure to his creative endeavors. www.owensader.com
Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer Review
Title: Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer
Maker: Chunsoft
Publisher: Sega
System: DS
Cost: $10
I wondered how long it would be before I used the term rogue-like in my review. The answer: 13 words. But it’s hard to describe the game without that adjective, and if you had a rogue type experience, you’ll probably (but maybe not) hate this. And that’s why Shiren is a really enjoyable game. Because at their heart any rogue-like experience is basically a puzzle. You can take as much or as little time as you want, it rewards patience and methodicalness. What Shiren does better, is it also gives the game life. You have characters, and even though you’re dying, this story continues to push develop. 2 parts rogue, 1 part ground-hog day.
Considering it’s strengths, I would even make the strange leap and say that people who like Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls would find enjoyment in Shiren. The gameplay is fundamentally different, but it has the same type of risk and reward, and both leave you with a sense of responsibility when you perish.
It also has a lot of content, and they’re not tacked on grind-fests. Even after the finish, entirely new branches of the story open up. They introduce new play mechanics, and keeping you playing as you continue to interact with the world and it’s characters. Not the highest budget game, but just a fun time.
Review: 4 Stars
Memory: Being accidentally punched and killed by your “brother” in the middle of a quest.
Insert Credit Podcast, An Update
So the Insert Credit Podcast has gotten significantly better. It was funny before, but I think the addition of a fourth person to every show has made it much more fluid. The last one has a hilarious comment about a trash-bag and a fan.
http://insertcredit.com/2012/08/31/the-insert-credit-podcast-episode-eight-al-pacinos-vegas-adventure/
Spec Ops: El Linea
I’ve been marching through the campaign of The Line. And I can see why the game hasn’t sold really well. Compared with a game like Max Payne 3 it just lacks a lot of that polish. But who can blame them. The credits after Max Payne were ridiculous. There must have been a thousand people credited.
But perhaps it’s only a promise of what could be, but there is something to it. It doesn’t really escape this demi-god fantasy where you literally kill hundreds of people, and that’s the big flaw as I can see it. Granted you’re a Delta operative, but you’re still just a man.
The story is cool enough that it propels you forward long after I would have normally stopped playing. The next evolution of this, as I see it, is a game where you can only take lives rarely, not only because of the moral implications, but because the physical fatigue and cleverness of other humans wouldn’t allow it.
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 – It’s No Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (aka, The Longest Review Title Ever)
Title: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2
Company: Atlus
System: DS
Cost: $29
Yeah… High School Sucks
You know why I liked Nocturne? Because it didn’t make me cringe. It’s certainly a flawed game (the possibility of getting killed in a random preemptive enemy attack after 30 minutes of progress coming to mind). But the darkness of the game felt very real. The true demon ending being the darkest surprise I’ve ever had in a video game. Persona 4 on the other hand, had me groaning all over the place. But despite being embarrassing, Persona 4 is still a good game.
Devil Summoner 2 feels infinetely more like Persona 4 than Nocturne. It stars a group of (mostly) Japanese high school students in a demon infested Japan. You need to make “social links” with your friends to improve battle effectiveness. The only real difference is that Survivor 2, well isn’t that interesting. As a strategy game it’s weak, and the few strong ideas (demon auctions, designating learnable techniques at the beginning of battle) are overshadowed. It’s another grind, just this time with a weak story and transparent characters. It still has the benefits of the Shin Megami universe though, and the adult (or perhaps teen is more appropriate) pokemon characteristics can entertain for awhile.
Review: 2 Stars
Memory: Creepster scene where the high-school girls compare breast sizes (in text). This is the kind of shit that can be cut from a US release.
A break to play Spec Ops: The Line
Shit, I already wrote this post once and somehow I deleted it.
Anyway, to keep it short. I wanted to play through the second ending on Dark Souls before the Prepare to Die edition released to consoles. I’m not normally a completionist, but I like this game enough that it seems worth it to see everything that it has to offer. But for the past views weeks a small fire has been building around Spec Ops: The Line. Apparently the initial sales were terrible, and I don’t know if that’s improved since then, but the game seems to have a small but vocal following. And so I decided that instead of waiting, like I usually do, I would take a break from Dark Souls and play it now to see if I felt the same way. I want to know if there is something in this game that could give it longevity beyond the higher budget, and better reviewed media that so quickly came and went.
Shiren the Wanderer
Finished Shiren last night, or technically it’s called Mystery Dungeon. Neither are strong names, but Mystery Dungeon is especially bad for being bland and mostly inaccurate. I was dead for most of the morning because it’s an easy game to bleed away your night.
I said it before, but it really is a charming game. Early on you’re crushing everything in every level. By the end you’re scrabbling past foes because you know you only need to make it to the next staircase, xp be damned. It forces you to change play mechanics on the fly, and utilize every item. And then once it’s over, the whole game celebrates, a bar wench makes as blunt of a pass as an E rated game will let them get away with, and half a dozen more story-driven continuations, each with it’s own play twist, open up.
iOS or gag me
A year ago I bought Shiren the Wanderer for the DS from the cart in Best Buy where all the discount carts are corralled. I’ve realized something while playing it. My iPhone can blow me.
I’ve been hearing about how handhelds are dying, but this simple DS game is leagues more enjoyable than the recent iOS games I’ve played. Even 100 Rogues, which is similar to Shiren, and saw me log plenty of time, doesn’t quite hold up to the same degree.
Momentum can make people predict incredible things. Free-To-Play was supposed to be the business model of the future, then with one bad quarterly earnings report everyone says that Zynga is dead. The truth is obviously in the middle.
A day with an enjoyable DS game and I’ve found myself again using my phone as a phone.
Insert Credit Podcast worth listening to? B+
Even though I have significantly less time than usual, I’ve been listening to more videogame… chat shows? I don’t know what to call them. But basically people talking about all things vg related, sometimes being funny, sometimes being serious.
Insert Credit (http://insertcredit.com/) has a pretty decent podcast. At least the one I listened to was pretty funny (episode 2). The first half of episode three was a little bit of a downer, but it could pick up. Reading enough of the earlier articles I had a face for the names on the podcast (it’s old, but read the 2011 E3 coverage, they seem like some guys I would want to hang out with). But I was really surprised when I actually put a voice to the faces. They did not belong as expected…
Anyway, Tim Rogers, whose voice and manner of speech was the most unexpected by far (l had assumed he was one of the others until someone addressed him in the third episode), made a game awhile back. It’s called Zigguart, and I basically suck at it. Not to say it isn’t good, it seems to be. It’s probably worth talking about sometime.
My old “new” PS2
I dug out my second PS2 (one of the slimline models). And as I’m setting it up I’m amazed at how beautiful the thing is. It’s tiny and light, and then I remember why I never owned an Xbox. It’s all negligible with the current generation. There’s talk of a new PS3 model. Hopefully they draw inspiration from this little guy.