Cheerful Jester = Evil Minion? I don't think so.

I have a Sega Saturn. I got it last year and it came with a few games, one of which was Tomb Raider. I accidentally fell over a ledge in that game and was almost mauled by a bear, but that's beside the point. The games that came with my Saturn weren't really all the important. There was one reason that I wanted a Sega Saturn: NiGHTS into Dreams.

Just as Nintendo has Kirby and Namco has Klonoa, NiGHTS is Sega's own dream-related character. NiGHTS into Dreams takes place in a dream world separated into two sections or whatever they're called: Nightopia and Nightmare. Guess which one's good and which one's bad? In Nightmare resides an evil baddie called Wizeman who creates Nightmaren to do his bidding, which consists of stealing orbs called Ideya from children during their dreams. Anyone, Wizeman made two jester-like first class Nightmaren named NiGHTS and Reala. Reala was loyal to Wizeman, as good henchman are. NiGHTS was more free-willed, but how is this surprising? I mean just look at him! He's way too happy looking to be evil!


How is that even remotely threatening?"

Anyway, Wizeman didn't like NiGHTS being a bad minion, so he locked the purple jester up in a cage (Ideya Palace) where NiGHTS idly bounced around with no hope of escape. At least, he had no hope until two kids showed up in Nightopia. Eliot or Claris, depending on who you play as, show up and promptly get four of their five Ideya stolen from them (it happens each level), with only the rare Red Ideya of Courage remaining with them. Each kid can walk up to the Ideya capture and "dualize" with NiGHTS, which allows the Nightmaren to escape his prison and fly around to gather back the Ideya.

This video shows a typical NiGHTS into Dreams level, and even though it seems overly simplistic, it's actually pretty fun. You need to collect enough of the blue chips (forgot their name) in order to break the Ideya capture and well... get the Ideya. You need to get three or four Ideya each level, I can't remember which. After each level comes a boss fight, which sometimes confuses me because I have trouble understanding what to do. I mean, I'm still not sure how to beat Jackle.

A year or two ago Sega finally released a NiGHTS sequel. NiGHTS Journey of Dreams (I acutually played it before the first one) offers a bit more level variety, and healthier dose of plot. It's actually pretty similar to the first game: Will and Helen help NiGHTS round up their Ideya and defeat Wizeman. Reala makes a few more appearances in this game, mainly to force loyalty to Wizeman upon/fight NiGHTS. It doesn't really work.

NJD features a little garden thing called My Dream, where the player can raise small fairy creatures called Nightopians. Honestly, I don't really understand it. Sometimes it's happy, other times the trees are cut down.

Anyway, that's the blog post. There wasn't much noteworthy there, but it works. See ya next time. Happy gaming.

So my brother went to an anime convention and got me a Vampire Knight shirt signed by Vic Mignogna (Zero's English voice actor). This is awesome in many different ways.
a)It's an anime shirt
b)It's an anime shirt with Zero Kiryuu on it (my favorite Vampire Knight character)
c)It's signed by Vic Mignogna, one of my favorite voice actors.
Not only did that shirt excite me, it inspired me to improve my drawing. So now I'm looking at pictures of Vampire Knight characters (and some other pictures) and drawing their hands. Why? Because I can't draw hands, and therefore need to learn. It's going pretty well actually.

One more thing, in Vampire Knight Zero always gets the short end of the stick. Always. Things may go his way for a while, he might even smile a little bit, but then someone (sometimes himself) screws it up. Of course, he never makes a huge effort to make things better, because he's so angsty, reserved, and angry...
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I haven't really touched Twilight Princess this past week. Mainly because I was busy, or I just didn't want to play it. Now that it's the weekend, I've been sidetracked by Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I'm trying to play as Marth now thanks to a totally awesome web-comic. But I digress, the point is Link's currently sitting in the entrance to the lava-filled Goron Mines probably sweating buckets thanks to his thick green tunic.

Let's jump straight into gameplay. I can't speak for the Gamecube version, but I can't help but feel the attack combos in the Wii version of TP don't flow well. To attack all one must do is swing the wiimote aorund a bit, and Link will in turn swing his sword around a bit. Shaking the nunchuk produces a nice spin attack, and the A button gives a nice jump attack when targeting an enemy. Still, every attack seems slow and disjointed. Plus, it gets repetitive after a while. Slash, slash, spin, jump. Jump, slash, spin, slash. Wolf Link's attacks, in my opinion, aren't much better. Same controls, but the attacks seem even less connected. Maybe there are more attacks to learn though, or I'm just not doing it right.

Every time Link steps into the Twilight, he turns into a wolf. Midna then asserts her control over him, giving tips when needed. It's during Link's second Twilight adventure that the pair comes across a missing bridge. Then Midna gives you the basics on teleporting, something that can only be done in the twilight realm. It's pretty nifty is you ask me. Saves the trouble of run-dashing all the way back to the Ordon forest to find the bridge, because y'know... the shadows took it so they must've of left it somewhere.

It took me a minute to realize I was actually looking for an entire bridge left in a forest.

Zelda games are good at being serious yet still throwing in nice bits of comedy. Good ol' Epona disappears after Link turns into a wolf, and later shows up running like crazy to throw off the goblin things riding her. Link then gets the job of clambering on his charging horse and bringing her back in line. For some reason, watching Link get tossed of Epona over and over again made me laugh. Another thing I found hilarious was Link sumo wrestling. Not only did it seem random, but Link is basically a stick next to the guys his wrestling. It cracked me up.

Short entry today, because I don't have much to say (rhymes!). Happy gaming. See you next time.

Next time on I've Been Playing for 40 Hours: I wish I knew...

Epona gets the day off too...

So I've been watching Phineas and Ferb since spring break, and I'm not ashamed to say I really like it. I mean, I've already accepted the fact that I'm just a really big kid, so I have no qualms about watching cartoons (and haven't for quite some time). Actually, I'm watching Phineas and Ferb right now. Oh, Perry the Platypus, you crack me up.
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I admit that throughout my gaming career I haven't been the biggest Legend of Zelda fan. I watched my brother play Ocarina of Time quite a bit when I was younger, but all of my attempts at playing it probably didn't get much farther than the Forest Temple, if that much, and of course I always wanted to hang out at Lon Lon Ranch because Epona is the best horse eve. Other Zelda games warranted even less of my attention, until Wind Waker. Why Wind Waker? It's adorable, and was actually a great game, but then I got to the tower at the end and haven't played it much since.

Last weekend, I was searching for something to play. I didn't feel like BlazBlue, and Tales of Vesperia involved too much grinding, so eventually my eye landed The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I thought, "Hey why not," so I popped it into the Wii, erased my first file (which only had 00:57 minutes on it), and started again.

I can pretty easily say that my opinion on Zelda is changing.

Where to start? Most people probably know how a Zelda game typically works. You play Link. Link lives a normal life until abnormality makes him grab a sword, shield, and green tunic (Wind Waker Link wasn't fond of the tunic), and then whisks him off to meet Princess Zelda. As it turns out, Link has to save the world. Thus begins the game.

Twilight Princess starts off calmly. Country boy Link is a responsible, well-liked young man in the village or Ordon. The village children, save for one twerp, harbor a great deal of admiration for Link, and why shouldn't they? He can ride like an expert, is sweet as can be, and even knows the basics of swordplay. Not to mention his horse is awesome. Everyone seems to love Epona. If Link gets a day off, Epona does too. Not because I wanted to give her a day off, but because adorable village boy Colin would not let me ride Epona. Heck, Ilia (who's about Link's age) death glares Link when she sees that Epona is lightly injured, and he flinches in turn.

Things turn for the worse when, right before Link is about to deliver a spiffy sword to the royal family at Hyrule, Ordon is attacked by mysterious "beasts" who cover the land in twilight, and kidnap the village kids (and Ilia). As if this isn't bad enough, Link gets dragged into the realm of twilight as a wolf. A really cool looking wolf. He takes it really well, actually. Anyway, after awaking in a jail cell Link meets the bizarre Midna. She smirkily helps Link out of cell and very promptly decides to ride him like a horse while basically telling him he can listen to her and get out, and not listen to her... he needs to listen to her.



Quite quickly you can figure out that Midna is using Link for her own purposes. She doesn't really hide it, because Link really does need to listen to her if he wants to get out of the twilight realm and save his friends. One might think this personality would make Midna an annoying character. I, on the other hand, think she's awesome and immensely entertaining, despite the fact that she's initially more interested in Link's fighting ability than his actual well-being.

Though, Midna did seem quite concerned when I was lolly-gagging around in a burning building. It was nice to know she cared. Then again, when said building caught fire she promptly left despite the "romance" of the situation.

She enjoys Link's pain. I know it.

Next time I'll try to stop talking about plot, but no guarantees. Happy gaming. See you next time.

Next time on I've Been Playing for 40 Hours: Twilight Princess Part 2

So I suddenly want to rewatch Gundam 00, but Bandai's taken all but ten of the videos off of their youtube channel. The episodes they do have are in Japanese with English subtitles, which is fine except I'm used to the English cast for Gundam 00. Guess I'll just wait until the complete collection comes out...
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"Carl's story: one-hundred percent complete. Oh yeah, now onto arcade mode."

Ten stages shouldn't be that hard, right? Even though I was told that Nu-13 is even harder in arcade mode, I can still win, right? I'll eventually be able to pull off a victory on stage eight, right?

Of course not!

With a few blips along the way (and the fight against Litchi, that was annoying), I was actually able to bumble through arcade mode with Carl the other day. Then I got to stage eight: Hakumen. Here's a poorly organized picture to show how well my fights against Hakumen go (the "second panel" is in the bottom left).



He pretty much tosses me around like a worn-out rag doll. It doesn't help that it's Unlimited Hakumen, so his Heat gauge is... unlimited. Also, I'm pretty sure Hakumen can also dish out some pretty mean counters (whether for Distortion or Astral Heats I'm not sure), so I'm kind of scared to attempt any specials at times.

Have I gotten better at playing BlazBlue? Think so.
Have I gotten great at BlazBlue? Not a chance.

I've yet to try playing as any other character, but I'm thinking of playing as either Bang or Ragna. Each character has a pretty unique fighting style, so I'll probably have to head into training mode each time I try out a new character. For example, Carl uses Nirvana in battle, and he's the only character that uses anything like her in battle. Litchi, on the other hand, has a pole that can be placed on the battlefield. This pole can then be used to launch Litchi into the opponent or... do whatever her other attacks are. Then there's Arakune, who can float across the battlefield, turn invisible (you can still see a blur where he is though), and do other weird things.

Yeah, pretty diverse.

I'm the kind of person who enjoys seeing subtle, but neat, touches in games. BlazBlue includes some nice bits of character specific interaction in battle in the form of in-battle quotes. Jin Kisaragi will call Ragna "brother" in battle, something he obviously wouldn't call any other character. Bang, Carl's self-proclaimed mentor, occasionally shouts "You have a long way to go Carl!" when fighting the young puppeteer. In truth, it's really nothing much but I find it incredibly cool.

That's all I have to say on BlazBlue right now. It's a good game, but some of the moves are difficult for me to pull off ("Half circle back, foward, C! Aghh! C'mon! Half circle back, foward, C! Why won't my Distortion Heat work?!"). Until next time, happy gaming.

Next time on I've Been Playing for 40 Hours: The Legend of Zelda Twilight Pincess

Hey, lookit! Another fighting game!

I turned on Pandora Radio so I could listen to some music while typing this post, and it gave me a song I haven't heard in a while. I'll probably have it stuck in my head for a while, but I don't really mind.
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I came home on Friday and saw that the PS3 was updating something. This prompted me to look on the stack of games atop the cabinet with all the consoles in it for a new addition, because it seems the PS3 is bound and determined to slowly torment excited players by slapping them with long updates every time you put in a new game. This proved problematic when I was bouncing up and down waiting to play Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time. I wound up running back and forth between two rooms to pass time and put my energy to good use, but I digress. As it turns out, my brother picked up a copy of BlazBlue since the price dropped to $20.

I've seen BlazBlue before. It was one of those games that I looked at when I went into Gamestop, thought "I should look that up," and promptly forgot about by the time I left the store only to repeat the cycle the next time I happened upon the game during another Gamestop visit. As it turns out, BlazBlue is a fighting game that, according to me brother, was meant to be like the Guilty Gear series. That would probably mean so much more if I had ever played Guilty Gear. Still, my interest was piqued, and I casually watched my brother play while I looked up voice actors (it's a habit).

This morning I made my own first attempt at BlazBlue, and chose Carl-Clover as my first character. I've probably made smarter decisions in my life. Ideally, I should have picked a rather simple character who I could use as a entrance to BlazBlue gameplay, but hey Carl's a cute little kid. He's even got a cool hat! The thing that makes Carl a poor learning choice is that to make the most of playing with him you have to use the marionette thing he travels with. The doll, Nirvana, makes up a good chunk (like, half) of Carl's attacks, excluding basic combos, so you have to control her during battle as well as Carl. Given that I have a hard time effectively controlling Carl, this doesn't work out for me. The player has to hold down the X button in order to automate Nirvana, which causes Carl's special Nirvana gauge to drain. Once that's down Nirvana just slumps over broken for a while.

The special moves of the game use the Heat gauge at the bottom of the screen. Distortion moves use fifty percent Heat (with Carl at least), while Astral moves use all one-hundred percent. Carl starts off with three Distortion moves, two of which use Nirvana, and his Astral move can be unlocked later. This video shows all of Carl's special attacks. Using a Distortion or Astral move only requires the correct percentage of Heat along with using the correct stick rotation and button combination.

BlazBlue has a surprising amount of story for a fighting game as far as I know. The game's story mode allows the player to play as any character and follow their story mode path. There are a few different paths to take within each story mode, but some endings may or may not be the true ending. Each character's story mode reveals more about their own personality. Carl calls Nirvana his sister. I'm not quite sure if it's because he really thinks she's his sister, or if he just feels like calling her Sis. I hope to find out. Anyway, getting one-hundred percent on each character's story will probably keep one busy for a while.

I haven't played BlazBlue much yet. Hopefully, I'll remedy that this week so I can get talk more about it next week, but don't hold me to it. Until then, happy gaming. See you next time.

Next time on I've Been Playing for 40 Hours: BlazBlue Part 2 (hey that rhymed!)

4/19/10 Edit:
Thanks to a nice guide that told me which paths I had yet to take, I fully completed Carl's story mode. I've learned a few things from this. Carl's kind of creepy, Jin Kisaragi's a jerk, and Taokaka has at least two different names for Ragna. The first fact made itself known when Carl needed to obtain either Jin Kisaragi or Noel Vermillion's weapon, and then showed up to pretty much say, "Hey, long time no see. I need that weapon. Oh, you won't give it to me? Let's fight!" The second fact showed up when, if Carl loses the fight, Jin uses his ice powers to freeze Carl (partially at least) and decided to kill him. The final fact actually showed up earlier when I was watching my brother play (as well as some of the second fact). Taokaka's a cat who is looking for Ragna the Bloodedge in order to defeat him and get a lot of money for food. At one point she calls him Ragnya (made more hilarious by the fact that she was talking to Ragna but had no idea it was really him), which made me chuckle because "nya" is a cat sound in Japanese. The second name was Rawrgna. I'm kind of hoping she calls him Rawrgnya at some point or another.

I'm getting better at using Carl. A few times in Arcade mode I've managed to attack the enemy from both sides using Carl and Nirvana in tangent. Most of the time Nirvana gets left on the other side of the field until the enemy or myself heads back to the other side. The enemy does so on accident, but I try to get back to the other side so I can hide behind Nirvana.

My concentration isn't working well at the moment.

First of all I'd like to say that much of this post was written last week, but I stopped during the middle of it. Then I never got back to it for a full week. Yeaaaah. I... I was on Spring Break. That's my excuse.

Second, I got a new kitten. His name is Mr. Darcy, and he's adorable! He also climbs bird cages.
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Fashion trends. I'm sure some people follow them very closely, and if that's their thing then I say go for it. For the people of Shibuya, fashion is definitely their thing (at least it is in TWEWY). There's comes a point rather early in the game where Shiki reveals to Neku that she is, in fact, a seamstress capable of creating her own clothes (including the outfit she wears in the game). As a hopeful clothing designer-to-be, Shiki makes it a point to keep up with fashion trends. Neku does not. Hilarity ensues.

After Shiki basically tells Neku that he looks dumb, she gives an explanation of how fashion trends work. This little tutorial isn't just there for the sake of Shiki's character development; it's part of the gameplay. Each area of Shibuya has a list displaying which clothing brands are in style and which brands are not. Various stores throughout Shibuya sell different brands of items, and ideally you're supposed to build up a stock of them (Neku and co. can't be seen on the streets, but they're perfectly visible in stores). When you enter a new screen in Shibuya you can check the trends and then dress your characters according to which brands rank the highest (using different brands of pins works too). If you use a brand that's in style you get some nice boosts in battle, otherwise you're just average. Allow me to note that the game is playable without worrying about trends. I typically dressed my characters according to what offered the best stats, and I used the pins that I could fight best with. Fashion trends held little importance to me.

Sticking with the trends will require a bit more than just buying everything you see in a store though. Some clothing items require the character to have a certain level of bravery before they don their new apparel. If I remember correctly, bravery can be increased by feeding your characters. Food items raise different stats on your characters, one of them being bravery. However, you can't just force food down your character's throats as if it's an eating contest. You have to wait until food digests (or whatever) before you can hand out more food. Different food items require you to wait longer. Honestly, this is another game aspect I conveniently forgot about until much, much later in the game. Therefore, I know little about it.

Haha, don't you all love my terrible stopping points? Due to the one week lapse in the writing of this entry, my thoughts aren't flowing well in terms of TWEWY. Don't worry though, I'm adding some extra stuff at the end to kinda sorta make up for no post last week.
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I had started writing about the game Persona 4 in this space, until I realized it was even more sporadic than my other entries. Instead, I'm going to briefly (I hope) talk about Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. I can actually play this game. This is important because it's a fighting game, and I normally just mash buttons and use cheap attacks to try and get somewhere in fighting games... Wait, that's what I'm doing in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom... Ummm, this is different though because when I play it's less like grasping at straws and more like educated guessing! I'm mashing buttons, but at least I know how to use some special moves!

Seriously though. I've managed to complete arcade mode runs, even though the final boss requires me to revert back to cheap long range shots. This game pits various Capcom characters such as Ryu from Street Fighter and Viewtiful Joe from... Viewtiful Joe, against Tatsunoko character like Ken the Eagle and Yatterman-1. I'd never really heard of Tatsunoko before, but now I kind of want to watch the Yatterman anime.

Like other fighting games, various control stick/pad and button combinations activate certain skills. With Zero from Megaman X for example, his strongest attack (Dark Hold) is activated by moving the control stick forward, down, foward and pressing two attack buttons (on the GCN controller). Other attacks require you to roll the control from the bottom to the right while pressing one attack button. Yeah, I'm not explaining this well. It probably makes more sense when you're actually playing.

I tend to mess up control stick movements and get the wrong attack, leading me to announce "That was unintentional!"

There's not really much plot, but some of the characters have humorous arcade mode endings. Otherwise, it's pretty much straight up fighting. That sounds bad, but it's nothing terribly graphic.

My thoughts aren't piecing together well right now, and I wanted to keep this "brief" so I'm gonna stop. Have a good week folks!

Next time on I've Been Playing for 40 Hours: I haven't planned that far ahead yet.

Noise, games, and fashion

I've been playing long enough to beat the game (unfortunately and actual time count is unavailable), and I stand by my my statement that The World Ends With You is one of me favorite DS titles.

The World Ends With You, also known as It's a Wonderful World in Japan, is a DS RPG made by Square-Enix, creators of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. I found this game purely by accident while working on an assignment for a class a couple years ago. For some reason or another, I was looking at games online and saw The World Ends With You posted on a store listing, looked up some stuff about it, liked it, and sometime after that picked it up at Gamestop. It's brilliant. I love the plot, I love the characters, I love the music...

...and I fail at the gameplay.

However, we'll touch on my ineptness in a bit. The plot rundown comes first. Neku Sakuraba is anti-social, quick-tempered, lone wolf teenager who always has a pair of headphones over his ears in order to block out everyone around him. Neku himself states at the game's beginning, "I don't get people. Never have, never will." He's basically alone, and it doesn't seem like he intends to change that. One day, Neku wakes up in the center of the scramble crossing in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Despite being a Tokyo resident himself, waking up in the midst of a crowded shopping district would surprise anyone. Even better, Neku's got a case of amnesia. It's not a total mind wipe or anything. The bitter teen has retained his "do it on my own" personality, and he knows who he is, but memories about his past are non-existent.

Before he can get his mind straight, some freakish frog creatures start chasing him. Naturally, he runs and is hopelessly confused when none of the countless people around him even attempt to offer assistance. Just as his situation looks dire, a girl darts up to him and forces him to make a pact with her, after which the two of them promptly kick the enemies' tails. The girl is named Shiki (not-so affectionately called Stalker by Neku) and proceeds to explain to Neku that they both are taking part in something called the Reaper's Game, and they have to survive for one week. They've gotta stick together in order to keep from getting erased by the monsters they were just attacked by called Noise. Each day the pair will be given a mission to complete in a set time, and if it's not complete they "face erasure."

Neku was not pleased.

The plot then continues to unravel in a series of surprising twists, dramatic events, and plenty of funny banter between characters. Now onto the gameplay. Different DS games use the system's dual screens in different ways. TWEWY uses both screens in battle at the same time. The bottom screen in where you control Neku. You move him by dragging the stylus around the screen, and you attack using psychs, which for Neku are small pins in the Reaper's Game that each have different abilities that Neku seems to be quite adept at. Psychs have various ways to use the ability, and you can choose which psychs you want to use. Sometimes you dash the stylus across the screen, sometimes you may just tap the screen somewhere, and sometimes you might need to shout into the microphone (blowing into it works just as well). Here's a video of Neku's screen.

The top screen holds Neku's partner Shiki. If you so choose, Shiki can be controlled by the CPU. Otherwise, you can take over yourself. I really don't understand much of controlling Shiki, but by using the control pad you navigate through a short path of arrows to pick a symbol card. If you pick the right cards (which I'm totally not sure about) you can add to a fusion gauge thingy that can eventually allow Shiki and Neku to perform a dual attack. I normally just jam the control pad either right or left just to get Shiki to move and attack faster, but if I get tired of doing that I can stop and the CPU will pick up the her controls in a few seconds. See Shiki's portion of battle here.

If my lame explanation of Shiki's gameplay didn't already justify my claim of battle ineptness, I'll explain a little more. I'm can't adequately focus on both screens at the same time. If I'm focusing on playing as Neku normally I'll only jam the control pad either left or right, as stated earlier. If I'm focusing on the top screen, the most I'll do with Neku is just dash him around the bottom screen so he won't get the snap beaten out of him. The CPU can control Shiki, but Neku's movements are all up to the player. Even if you can only fight efficiently with one screen you still need to watch out. The health bar is shared by both characters, so they both to be decently able to... not get killed. Both screens together look like this (the black cat in the video is Mr. Mew, the stuffed cat Shiki carries as well as her weapon. Neku swears it looks like a pig.)

Next week I'll touch on some more of TWEWY various aspects, including fashion. Yup, fashion. Happy gaming folks.

Next week on I've Been Playing for 40 Hours: TWEWY Part 2