My Playlist for April-May 2019

We’re only five months into 2019 but I can already say that this has been my most barren year for gaming so far. Not a great thing to publicise on a gaming blog, huh? Well, a combination of things has stunted my gaming enthusiasm:

• Being stuck on ‘big’ games for too long
• Less available time than before
• A general lack of desire

With that said, I have still managed to get my game on during April and May and play a few things…

Dead or Alive 5: Last Round (PS4)

Earlier in the year, I posted about why DOA5 was such a great fighting game in my opinion. With the arrival of DOA6, I decided to get back into its immediate predecessor again. There are a few aspects of 6 that I’m not overly happy about hence why I haven’t purchased a copy yet. That and the fact that I didn’t ever get the most out of DOA5 despite playing all of its revisions. I tend to stick with Ayane and a few other characters for the most part so there is still a lot for me to get from the game which is why I wanted to get back into playing it. I think, as a gamer, you just KNOW when you haven’t mentally finished with a game and this is certainly the case with me and Last Round.

Soulcalibur VI (PS4)

Fighting games have always been my favourite genre but I seem to have fallen behind lately. Thankfully, the wonderful Soulcalibur VI has reignited my passion for fighting games and even though I haven’t sat down with a controller nearly as much this year, this is probably the one game that has hooked me enough to lose track of time on numerous occasions. To tell you the truth, I’m still in shock at how good this game is and how we came from the awful Soulcalibur V to this, a sequel which is right up there with SCII and SCIII for me. Every time I take a bit of a break, Namco drop some more DLC for the game that gets me all excited again and makes me feel the way I did earlier in my gaming life when I wasn’t so jaded. I love creating characters for example and Namco keeps adding new customisation parts that encourage me to make more new characters and go back to my older ones to update them. Oh and as of typing this, they just added in the OSTs from SCII and III to customise the game with! SCVI has pretty decent music in fairness but II and III were the high points for me so this was AMAZING.

Metal Slug Anthology (PSP)

Last month I decided to charge up and use my handhelds just to look after the batteries. What I didn’t expect was to end up playing a fair bit of Metal Slug Anthology on the PSP, a game that I sold a long time ago but had had the foresight to retain on my custom firmware-enabled memory stick. Of course, you can’t just have a “quick go” on a Metal Slug game; they are addictive and it just doesn’t work that way! So I ended up playing all of the games and reviewing the compilation. What I re-learnt was that the classics don’t age and neither does Nazca’s mind-blowing art style. I adore these games and playing them granted me a strong hit of love for videogames in general.

Yakuza 5 (PS3)

This was the “big” game that was bogging me down and had been for over a YEAR now. Yakuza is one of my most cherished videogame series’ and so it must be stressed that I wasn’t burnt out on it and I hadn’t had enough. The problem was that I had decided to go for 100% on Yakuza 5 which turned out to be a bad decision. Eventually (for my own sanity) I had to turn back and be satisfied with 95% completion. So I finally, FINALLY completed the game after 170 HOURS of playtime. Fucking hell; how did that happen? All the wandering around, fighting and trying to get the 100% I guess. This is easily the hardest game in the series to 100% in my experience and so I don’t feel too bad about abandoning my quest as much as it hurts the obsessive part of me. I don’t enjoy or understand the Japanese gambling games, the Ito fish is impossible to catch (seriously, fuck that fish – it doesn’t exist!) and the hardest level of Winter Combat is something I ran out of SOUL to continue attempting. It was a superb game though and it’s a shame that it was a digital-only release here in the West as my Yakuza shelf looks incomplete without a box showing the number ‘5’ on the spine. I have Yakuza 0, Kiwami and 6 all ready to play on the PS4 (still need to pick up Kiwami 2…) but I think I will take a bit of a break from the series to avoid burnout.

3D Streets of Rage 2 (3DS)

As part of charging up my handhelds, I played this again on my 3DS since I have very few retail games left in my collection and have nothing new to play. This is no bad thing however as Streets of Rage 2 is one of my all-time favourite games and a masterpiece of design. These days I tend to stick with the mighty SoR Remake on PC but there’s still something nice about going ‘pure’ and playing the second game as it was intended. M2 did a sterling job with the 3DS port and all the lovely options/settings it comes with and so I always have a blast coming back to SoR2. As with Metal Slug, games like this make me feel happy without even trying. I can’t wait for SoR4…

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy (PS4)

This has been sat on my shelf since Christmas and I’ve only just taken the wrapping off the box. I’ve played Activision’s remasters in the “wrong” order and completed the Spyro Reignited Trilogy right after receiving it (also a Christmas gift) but then I got distracted by other games and the mountain that was Yakuza 5 so Crash got neglected. Spyro was always one of my Playstation favourites though so those remasters were ALWAYS going to get played first. I finally got stuck into the N.Sane Trilogy yesterday and so far, so good. I’ve aways considered the original Crash Bandicoot to be the trickiest of the original trilogy with a more merciless level design that holds little room for error and I’m not finding it much easier this time around. That’s probably because the OG game was tight and short of dumbing down the game and level design, there wasn’t anything else that could be done. I’m glad that they didn’t meddle however because otherwise, I simply wouldn’t be interested in these remasters. It’s nice to be playing these games again in lovely PS4-o-vision but at the same time, I’m feeling a bit ‘meh’ about revisiting the original Crash Bandicoot. Don’t get me wrong, I still adore it but I feel like I’m going through the motions. It probably doesn’t help that I downloaded the first game on my PSVita not that long ago so the game is still relatively fresh in my head. Still, it’s fun enough and the 90’s PS1 fanboy in me is enjoying the nostalgia hit. I played these games when they were new back then and I can’t understand where the time went!

That brings me up-to-date with my gaming situation so far in 2019. I plan to take a break from the bigger, more time-consuming stuff for a while now so that I can focus on having a greater variety of gaming experiences rather than slogging away at the same few games for an eternity.

Crystal Dreams

This last week saw me finally polish off the e-shop download of Pokemon Silver Version for 3DS. I ended up spending around 60hrs with the game and in truth, that figure could have easily been shaved by a considerable amount had I not spent ages hunting out my favourite monsters and training them up even though I had no space for them in my final/ideal team. I felt like a bit of a boss taking a Lv60+ team of Lugia, Typhlosion, Tyranitar, Dragonite, Raikou and Gyarados into the final showdown with Red (I would have also taken Ho-Oh but I needed Gyarados as my ‘HM slave’ to navigate Silver Cave) and I managed to beat the toughest trainer in the game on my first attempt. That Snorlax that bothered me so much back in the day? No problem! Typhlosion ended that sucker with a few Dynamic Punches. Yeah!

It was a very nostalgic experience overall and I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the classic sound effects, sprites and simpler Pokemon mechanics that I’d been missing with the newer games. Despite the amount of hours I invested into Silver, I’m still keenly waiting for January 26th and the next classic re-release that I’d been hoping for…

Pokemon Crystal Version was the edition that everybody had really been clamouring for when the Gold/Silver re-releases were initially announced and I can only presume that Nintendo held it back on account of it being so similar to G/S that nobody would buy either of those versions. This way, gamers like me will double-dip and I can’t deny that I have fallen for their nefarious marketing tactics! Yellow Version was re-released alongside Red/Blue but that was likely a different scenario given how Yellow had quite a lot of differences compared to the games it was updating and was changed-up to follow the TV show more closely.

Crystal is more of a subtle update over its direct predecessors but is – in my opinion anyway –  the definitive edition of the second generation of games. When this game was originally released, the introduction of animated sprites was incredibly special for example. The first iteration of the Battle Tower debuted in Crystal too (and boy was it brutal!) and a slightly tweaked storyline put Suicune into a position of prominence, allowing the player to eventually battle the legendary Pokemon without worrying about it fleeing as it, Raikou and Entei would immediately do in Gold/Silver.

Gotta love those old sprites!

Crystal is – like most of the early Pokemon games – quite nostalgic for me as I clearly remember receiving it for Christmas on the year of release along with a brand spanking new Gameboy Advance. How ironic that the first game I played on a new system was one via the backwards compatibility! The more advanced (see what I did there?) aesthetics of those shiny new GBA titles didn’t deter me from embarking on a second tour of Johto however and in 2018, history is set to repeat itself. I really cannot wait and I’m fortunate enough to have received a £15 e-shop voucher from my sister at Christmas so I’m saving that for the 26th!

It’s also worth mentioning that Nintendo have slightly tweaked this version of Crystal in a rather special way. Aside from Pokemon Bank compatibility, they have also included a way to battle and capture Celebi without the need for any sort of special ‘event’! Wow! Celebi has long been one of those Pokemon that has been impossible to capture without being fortunate enough to attend a special event and outside of said event for Gold/Silver/Crystal (or the Japanese bonus disc for Pokemon Colosseum), I don’t believe Celebi has been made available since.

Roll on the 26th!

Has Fire Emblem become a Waifu Simulator?

This question (amongst others that I will discuss here in this post) was on my mind after having just invested 30+ hours into Fire Emblem Fates and deciding that I simply couldn’t be arsed to play the game anymore. A quick bit of background first though because I think that it’s extremely important to remember how the Western exposure of Nintendo/Intelligent Systems’ tactical gem has evolved in recent years. Fire Emblem has been around since the Famicom days in Japan and proved to be popular enough to spawn many sequels heading into the the 16-bit Super Famicom era. Over here however, it was a different story.

The first official Fire Emblem release that we received was for the Gameboy Advance back in 2003. Simply titled ‘Fire Emblem’, it was a prequel to the previous GBA release that remained a Japan-only deal and largely owed its English language existence to the popularity of Marth and Roy, two Fire Emblem protagonists that had been included as playable characters in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Once our FE cherry had at last been popped, the sequels began to flow in the form of The Sacred Stones (GBA), Path of Radiance (Gamecube) and Radiant Dawn (Wii). A remake of the original Famicom title christened ‘Shadow Dragon’ was also released on the DS in 2008 (2009 for North America).

The graphics in Path of Radiance weren’t the prettiest by Gamecube standards but the gameplay was utter gold.

Up to this point, the series was still relatively niche in the West despite the steady flow of localised sequels in the wake of that initial GBA release. This modest popularity was likely propped up by Nintendo in the form of much smaller print runs of the games than other software releases on the same consoles (Shadow Dragon is a pretty expensive pre-owned game here in Europe for example). It sold well enough for the first 3DS installment – Fire Emblem Awakening – to be given the green light for us however and this is where things began to change. For the better? In some ways…but not ALL ways.

Now, I have to point out that Fire Emblem Awakening is one of my favourite games amongst all games that I have played since I started gaming in the early-mid 90’s. I ploughed around 130 hours into it and enjoyed promoting my characters and embarking on an excessive level of grinding in order to create a formidable army. At the same time, it was apparent that the tone of the series had shifted seismically in many respects. Fire Emblem has always been a series where you will find characters with luminous hair hues for example but with Awakening, the anime tropes were beginning to dominate. You could now advance support links between male and female characters to the point where they would declare their feelings for one another and marry and I actually quite liked this element as I thought it was handled pretty well.

However, the fact that your main character is custom-created at the outset of the game and supposed to reflect YOU, the strategist, meant that you had the choice of who to get it on with in midst of war. Is this a bad thing? No but the fact that the majority of FE players are male really endeared this aspect of Awakening to the “Waifu” crowd. Now for those unfamiliar with the term “waifu”, I’ve gone off and retrieved a definition of the word from one of many online dictionaries:

waifu. Noun. (fandom slang) A fictional character from non-live-action visual media (typically an anime, manga, or video game) that one is attracted to and considers a significant other.

One thing I always admired about Fire Emblem was the way in which it was able to give us attractive/pretty female characters who were also formidable warriors, clad in plate armour and not made to look overly-sexy in a try-hard manner. In Awakening however, these sorts of traditional FE ladies are joined by several more sexualised characters that gained a following all of their own (Tharja for example) and various bits of borderline jailbait clearly not prepped for bloody battlefields.

Your MC in Awakening can marry Nowi. If you feel uncomfortable with that, just constantly remember that she is actually over 1,000 years old.

This aside, there are other things about Awakening that really made me see FE as a series that was pandering to the Otaku types. The increase in crazy, out-there anime style characters for example or the DLC hot springs episode which – of course – included lots of awkward moments as battle-hardened valkyries suddenly switched chain mail for swimsuits or kimonos. I’m not saying that I’m against this kind of thing because I’m as appreciative of a bit of casual titillation as the next male BUT it made no sense in a Fire Emblem game and it was that thought which continued to return to me. On the whole though, Awakening was a great game with the usual excellent gameplay, some fantastic music and – despite some of the weirdos – some brilliant characters. Yes, these new elements felt out of place in an FE game but thanks to how addictive the gameplay itself was, there was a pretty good balance.

Then came Fire Emblem Fates, a follow-up with a brand-new world, storyline and characters unrelated to Awakening as is often the case with FE sequels. The game was unique in that it shipped as two versions, entitled “Birthright” and “Conquest”, with each edition following a different perspective of the storyline’s war. A third segment of Fates called “Revelation” was then released digitally on the e-shop (or available physically in the Collector’s Edition) which tied together both games and acted as a conclusion of sorts. This sounded very interesting to me and I battled for a long time against stock shortages and greedy ebay re-sellers to obtain a Collector’s Edition boxset (and story/saga in itself) so that I could get the cartridge that contained all three parts of the storyline. After the brilliance of Awakening, this had to be the next step up? Wrong.

Oh boy! Somebody forgot their armour…yep, we’re knee-deep in Waifu territory with Fire Emblem Fates.

Aside from my gripes with the gameplay additions (such as new classes that I didn’t particularly like) and the fact that I didn’t care one inch for the storyline, there were many aspects of the game that had fully stepped over that line into Otaku territory. Waifu-ism was rampant now, especially when it came to the eye-poppingly breasty Camilla (pictured above) who thought that wearing some token midriff armour but leaving her overflowing chest and underpants exposed is a good idea when going up against axes and spears. Again, I cannot lie and say that I don’t like her design but I also think that it’s not very Fire Emblem and shouldn’t really belong here.

There are all these female characters for the male Waifu fanatic to choose from and this time, when you marry, the two of you have a little house within your army’s fort and certain ‘events’ trigger upon visiting such as receiving a kiss from your significant other or having them speak to you directly in a first-person viewpoint. Most of these moments are quite touching (if you’re a bit of a softie like me) but time and time again, I felt myself asking “is this just too much?”. Along with wildly mis-matched,  impractical outfits for many of the women, the romance element made me feel that the game was definitely part Waifu simulator.

There were other issues of course. I couldn’t care less about the majority of the characters for example and the usual assortment of stereotypical personalities were gradually drip-fed into my swelling assortment of units. The game also committed the sin (in my opinion anyway) of having a Japanese/Ninja-themed setting in a fictional, fantasy world. What is that all about? Why do developers have to do it? Familiarity for Japanese players perhaps? Possibly but for me, this sort of thing has always struck me as lazy and unispired and yes, I will include the likes of Final Fantasy VII‘s Wutai in that criticism. No game is safe.

Usually, Tharja would probably suck your soul away with the Nosferatu spell but because Waifu culture is a thing, THIS can happen too.

Overall, I simply didn’t enjoy Fates. Once again, I will just reaffirm that I really don’t mind the pervy fanservice-y stuff (such as the above image) but there are games specifically geared towards that kind of stuff and I really don’t think that Fire Emblem is the place for it. Unfortunately, Intelligent Systems likely had no say in the matter because – from what I have read – declining sales of the series (even in Japan) forced Nintendo to issue an ultimatum when it came to Awakening: sell 250,000 units or it will be the final Fire Emblem installment. This would largely explain why they have shifted the tone a little and tried to appeal to that niche but sizeable Otaku crowd. The move clearly paid off but at what price? The series seems secure for now but it has taken a new path that the old-school fans who grew up playing translations of the Famicom/Super Famicom releases may (understandably) turn their noses up at.

One final note/disclaimer from me is just to say that at the time of writing this post, I haven’t played the latest 3DS Fire Emblem game which is a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden. Drop me a comment down below and let me know if it is a little more restrained than Fates…

Digital: Pokemon Silver Version (3DS e-shop)

Recently I have had serious trouble finding the time to sit down and really get stuck into a home console game. I have various titles on the go for different machines but work and life in general keep getting in way. Enter the saviour that is handheld gaming. So far on this blog, I have talked about the PSP quite a bit but I owe my interest in handheld gaming to the Gameboy Colour which was my very first machine (discounting the Playstation in the house which wasn’t my own console). As with a lot of people my age, I received the GBC as a Christmas gift purely because I wanted to play Pokemon like all of my friends at school were doing. Red Version was where it all began but it would be the follow-ups, Pokemon Gold/Silver, that would really impress…

This moody title screen was impressive for an 8-Bit handheld…

I can distinctly remember being given some sort of really thick, unofficial Pokemon magazine by my Gran which had loads of information on the upcoming sequels. The magazine mapped out the initial few towns/routes, showed all of the new monsters (with Japanese names) and detailed new features to the series such as berries, the Poke-Gear and the introduction of Dark and Steel types. I absolutely pored over this magazine which was bringing us the latest information straight from Japan and the sequels simply could not come soon enough. I saved money bit by bit (money being difficult to come across as a child!) until I had the required £29.99 put aside in advance and I’ll be completely honest: I miss those days. Being so impressed and excited for a videogame as well as slowly but surely scraping the money together to buy it…so much better than the present day me who thinks “meh” to most game announcements and could afford any new release immediately if I was feeling irresponsible enough to casually drop £40-£50 on a PS4 game (which I very rarely do).

The very best part though was that the game lived up to all the expectations I had and then completely surpassed them. I opted for the Silver version since a) Lugia looked cooler than Ho-oh and b) there was this strange, unspoken sureness that the Gold version would be better because the word ‘Gold’ sounds more impressive than ‘Silver’. This meant that more people at school owned Gold Version and so having the opposite meant that I would be a more attractive trading partner. On a side note, this amusing little quirk also happened with Ruby/Sapphire on the GBA but since then, I think Nintendo haven’t produced a duo of Pokemon games with one version sounding better than the other.

Colour! This was a huge deal back on release.

Fast forward to 2017 and I have just downloaded the digital re-release of the game from Nintendo’s 3DS e-shop service. Initially I’d been intending to pick up the re-release of Red/Blue that has been available for some time now but I’d completely forgotten that Gold/Silver had also been slated for a re-release so when I saw these little beauties were available…well, I HAD to skip a generation unfortunately because Johto was calling and I didn’t have enough shop credit for both. These games retail for £8.99 by the way which is expensive for a digital download of a retro game but I personally think that the price is extremely fair for the size and depth of the games. Don’t forget that original cartridges have shot up in value over the years and that it is depressingly easy to end up with a bootleg copy or a genuine cart with a dead battery that needs replacing. These 3DS downloads bypass all of that and are so convenient. The 3DS’ rubbish battery life also does a great job of emulating the Gameboy Colour gobbling up those AA batteries!

Understandably, I was a little dubious about returning to one of my all-time favourite games in case I’d been looking back through rose-tinted specs all of these years. Thankfully this wasn’t the case and I am happy to say that I am utterly in love with this game all over again. Going so far backwards in a series that has evolved (get it?) so much over the years takes a bit of getting used to, mind. I’ve ploughed hundreds of hours into the GBA games and first generation of DS games (Diamond/Pearl) for example and so returning to a time where there were no passive Pokemon powers, no animated sprites, no weather effects and no many other things takes some getting used to. I keep expecting to be paralysed when hitting an electric type with a physical attack for instance. I imagine it would be even tougher for anybody who has played the DS remakes or the newer 3DS installments, doubly so if they are a younger gamer who only started playing Pokemon with the latest games.

Night-time was another “wow” moment in 2001

Maybe I AM blinded by nostalgia but I personally prefer the older games like this. The more primitive sound effects and old-school sprites invoke a warm fuzziness inside – sights and sounds of a simpler time. I find a lot more charm in these things anyway (regardless of the reason) and also happen to enjoy the more stripped-back simplicity of the game with knocking over the game’s gyms, trashing the Elite Four and swiping as many different Pokemon as possible being your only objectives. Obviously there were a few new distractions added to the second generation of Pokemon games and a lot of these relied on the game’s in-built date/time facility which dictated when certain events such as the bug-catching contest would occur. Other nice touches included trainers calling you on the phone (with pretty terrible conversation it has to be said!), being able to use the radio and different Pokemon appearing depending on whether it was day or night. At the time, these additions were incredible despite how trivial they may seem today. I’ve not played any of the 3DS generations of the games so I imagine that there is so much to do in those versions but I’m in no rush to find out. My Pokemon obsession ended with Diamond so while I am interested in catching up, I would still rather go back to a more focused and ‘innocent’ period in the series’ life such as Silver Version.

My current play-through is going very well and I’ve found myself using Pokemon in my team that I would never have previously even considered such as Slowpoke, Exeggcute and Zubat (mostly all evolved and nicely levelled by now of course). Revisiting all of the old towns and hearing that fantastic 8-Bit music again has been a lovely experience so far but I’m only around halfway through what the game has to offer with one final Johto gym standing in my way. Catching Lugia is my first priority however but the initial attempt didn’t go very well! I completely forgot about how Lugia makes the battle so annoying with its ‘Recover’ move as well as how higher level monsters in these older games simply refuse to be captured, even when at the lowest HP point and hit with a status effect. All good fun though!

So would I recommend this download? Whole heartedly. As I said earlier, the price may look steep for a retro download but considering all that you avoid by not trying to buy a working, genuine original copy then it’s fantastic value and having the game on your 3DS memory card with all of your other stuff is just so convenient and perfect for taking on the move – in perfect keeping with the spirit of the original releases and their pocket nature. I really hope that they also offer Crystal at some point since the remixed storyline, introduction of Pokemon animations and other little tweaks made it an update worth playing through all over again way back when and I’d happily do the same again today. Make it happen Nintendo!.