Review #226: Touch my Katamari

 The king's bad day.

 You thought Katamari was gone, well, you thought wrong. Touch my Katamari is the latest, and last(so far), installment of the Katamari Damacy series, and it actually introduces new mechanics into the mix!

 As per usual, the King of all Cosmos is up to his usual antics, this time around people have made him feel as if he isn't what he used to be, so he is gonna prove them wrong. How? By sending his son, the Prince, roll up stuff into his Katamari and turn it into stars. There's also a sub-story surrounding Goro, an otaku trying to improve himself. The art direction has changed a bit, it's a bit rougher and looks like a hand-drawn cartoon. All in all, I liked it. The art and the dialogue mix very well into some truly hilarious cut scenes, I actually found myself laughing out loud!

 For the uninitiated, in the Katamari Damacy series, you play as the Prince as he rolls around his Katamari, rolling over stuff smaller than the Katamari will make stuff stick to it, eventually increasing the size of the Katamari and allowing him to roll up bigger stuff. This new game actually has a couple of new things that I really liked. Firstly, controls, you can either play with the classic dual-analog rolling controls, or the new, simplified controls that relegate moving to the left analog stick and the camera to the right analog stick. The new settings make rolling around the Katamari a breeze, it's gonna be hard to go back to the classic setup! There's also optional touch-screen controls, but they are imprecise, so I didn't even bother. The one, one thing I had issue with was jumping, which is done, supposedly, by tapping on the upper half of the screen. I couldn't get it to work consistently, but at least it never was a necessity.

 The new features, which seem like gimmicks at first, are really fun and a great addition to the series. By using the touch screen or the touch pad behind the Vita, you can stretch or squeeze the Katamari. Besides covering more area, they also have different speeds, stretched Katamari is slow but covers a huge area, while the squeezed Katamari is very fast, at the expense of a lower, ground-level coverage. Using these mechanics is never a necessity, but not only are they fun, they are useful.

 As much as I liked the new controls and the new mechanics, the game has a handful of drawbacks that really play against it. For instance, cousins and presents are back, but these only appear on a level after you replay it once and twice it respectively. In previous games, both the Cousin and the present would be hidden on a level from the get-go. It seems like a minor nitpick, but they used this to pad the game. I finished the game, and then immediately, because it was so fun, played it again to unlock every cousin and then.... I immediately played through the entire game again to unlock every present, because it was so fun! Where's the problem? These three playthroughs, some that had repeated attempts on certain levels since I couldn't find the present... totalled to 4 hours. FOUR. HOURS. And on these four hours, I came across just 9 Fan Damacis(More on this later). It's a short game, there's 12 stages, which also amount to only 12 other Cousins. And since I'm on the topic of Cousins, there's no way to know if you found a level's Cousin and/or present, so I hope you have a good memory.

 The game has two forms of currency, Candy and Fan Damacis. Candy I approve of, you earn it after every successful level, and it can be used to purchase Eternal(no time limit) and Katamari Drive(Sped up!) variations of every stage, as well as music tracks or clothes for the King of all Cosmos(If that's your thing). Candy is a good way to add replay value to the game. But then there's the Fan Damacis.. these may, or may not, spawn on a level, and they are used to access the 'free' DLC. There's about 10 DLC missions, and from what I saw the add new areas and what not, but in order to open up these levels you need 10 Fan Damacis. Yeah, I couldn't be arsed to grind these bastards, particularly when you can buy them for 0.99 a piece. Microtransactions in a handheld game, no thanks. Maybe one day a tenth Fan Damacy will spawn and I will actually try one of the many DLC levels, but I'm not gonna encourage this practice. On the other hand, there's paid DLC for old music tracks, that DLC on the other hand is a better practice, it's optional and it's just aesthetic, and fans of the older soundtracks will get a kick out of it.

 There's a few other things about the game that bothered me a bit. The draw distance is a bit... short. You'll see objects pop in and out of view fairly often, and fairly close to the Prince. It's not a dealbreaker, but it's something that's hard not to notice. Other Katamari games would feature a 'Collection' book, that would catalog every single thing that you rolled into your Katamari, that has been reduced into the 'Curio Book', that only accounts for rare items. And lastly, and more personal, levels feel a tad smaller than what I'm used to. I liked how there are no loading times for when the Katamari grows, but no stage reaches the huge scale that Me & My Katamari would reach on later levels, heck, it doesn't even get as small as Me & My Katamari would get on the earlier levels!

 As far as the presentation is concerned, it's top-notch. This is the best looking Katamari game I've ever played(Not that it matters in such a minimalist game!). The Cut-scenes deserve to be mentioned again, they are gorgeous. The soundtrack isn't as strong as the other games I've played in the series, but even then, it's still really good. Voice acting is excellent as well, what little there is.

 As a whole, Touch My Katamari is disappointing. The new control scheme, the lack of loading times when transitioning sizes and the new mechanics are all welcome additions to the series, I'd say that they make the game even more fun that it's ever been... but it lacks in content in which to make use of it. The game is over before you know it, stages aren't as impressive as previous games, and the microtransactions are plain disgusting. At least, even at its worst, a Katamari game is still a pretty fun game.
 6.5 out of 10

Now Playing: SoulCalibur Legends

 Did you know? It's actually called 'SoulCalibur' and not 'Soul Calibur'.

 I'm not done with Terrible Wii Games(tm) just yet! Next(and last) in line is SoulCalibur Legends. First thing I gotta ask: Why? Why does this game exist? It says it tells Siegfried's story... but they also say that it's not canon to the series... so... what's the purpose? Was the Waggle to much a temptation as not to try to cash in on it?

 Regardless, it's not too bad. Using the nunchuck to dodge is nigh impossible, for me anyways, and every now and then it'll get one of my slash/thrust/slice inputs wrong, but not a big deal. There seems to be some combo system in place, you can knock enemies upwards and continue slashing, which is kinda neat. I think that if they had swapped the waggle for buttons, it could've been better, because there is some semblance of depth.

 But the rest of the game is a bit half-bakes. The targeting systems is decent, but y'know you are doing something wrong when Ocarina of Time's then-novel targeting system is better than yours. The issue comes from how much time it takes for the camera to catch up to the reticule every time you kill an enemy, or merely decide to target another one. As for the stages, they all follow suit, they are a collection of small 'arenas' connected by tunnels. The decor might be different, sometimes the walls might be made of bricks, dirt or metal, but it's the same thing over and over again.

 Still, it can be fun at times. It certainly shows more promise than Bleach - Shattered Blade!

Review #225: Bleach - Shattered Blade

 It's shattered alright.

 You know the deal, a shonen series gets popular and it spawns a simple fighting game. It's like a rule, something that will happen because it's the way of the world. Back when Bleach was in its heyday, it actually spawned quite the amount of fighting games. You had the amazing but ignored DS fighters, the simpler but fan service-er PSP fighters and then there were the PS2 arena fighters and the even more obscure Gamecube ones. Shattered Blade it's a pseudo-rework of one of those Gamecube game, but they swapped buttons for waggling, and it works about as well as you'd expect.

 As far as modes go, it offers the usual suspects: Episode Mode(Story Mode), Arcade Mode, VS(CPU or Player), Training(And tutorial!) and the Shop where you can buy items for the Gallery. The game's gimmick was Arturo Plateado, an original character designed by series' creator Kubo Tite exclusively for this game. His story is terrible. Basically, about 8 characters get an Episode Mode, which is more or less a retelling of the same story from their point of view, and them getting to fight Arturo Plateado in the end. The plot revolves about Arturo Plateado being sealed, but somehow being able to create duplicates of certain characters that coerce other characters into collecting all the shards of the Sokyoku. How can he create duplicates from within the seal? Who knows. Why not have these duplicates collect the shards incognito instead of trusting someone to defeat everyone else and collect all the shards? Who knows. Basically, the story is bad. As far as roster goes, it features 32 characters, 2 'guest' Arrancars as well as Arturo Plateado, while the other 29 come from the Soul Society arc. I thought the character selection was pretty good, and covers all the major characters from the arc.

 The first thing that you should know is that the game only supports the Wiimote+Nunchuck combo, and that you can only attack while waggling. There's three types of attacks: Normal, Critical and Special, and all three of them come in three varieties, depending if you thrust the Wiimote, flick it to the sides or up-and-down. It works about as well as you'd expect. But here's the thing, you can actually have a bit of fun with the game if you don't take it seriously. You can't take a fighting game that relies on imprecise motion controls seriously anyways. You can perform some simple normal-into-critical or normal-into-special combos, but nothing fancy Sadly, the novelty does wear off, and then it just gets dull. It doesn't help that the game is designed around a Stamina meter, because having to wait in order to attack again is always fun. It's not like having infinite stamina would've allowed you to spam your enemy to death, y'see, you can input Critical attacks WHILE receiving damage, not only will you break their combo, it will actually negate a ton of the damage you would've received, as a matter of fact, more often than not, breaking a normal combo attack with a critical attack will deal more damage than what you receive. It's not a deep game, and even if there were optional joystick support, buttons couldn't save this game.

 There's a few other mechanics at play as well. Z button is used to block and C is used to dash faster. The game plays like a 3D Arena fighter, which means full 8-directional movement is supported, although you can't jump. There's also a Bankai Gauge, and it is called that even for characters that don't have a Bankai, that is filled by dealing or receiving damage, or by waggling the nunchuck. Once it's full, waggle the nunchuck once more and you'll enter Bankai/'Super' mode. It increases everyone's attack power, and in some cases, it actually changes how they fight. Plus, one of the Special attacks becomes a Super Move. It only lasts for a while, so make the most of it. There's this one mechanic that really annoyed me though, Clashes. If two critical attacks clash, you will be subjected to a mini-game, in which you must play a best-out-of-5 rock-paper-scissors match... except that it's a stab-slash-slice mini-game. These bring the game to a halt, they are slow and boring, and worst of all, the game loves to mess up your inputs. Not that it matters since it's pretty much a luck-based affair, but knowing that if the sensor had read your move correctly would've netted you the win can be pretty vexing. Here's the thing, during normal attacks, it really doesn't matter if it reads your inputs wrong. If it reads your Critical Attack wrong, it doesn't matter either, they behave mostly the same. When it reads your Special moves wrong, it shouldn't be a big deal either since you should be using it to end a combo. Regardless, it doesn't seem to happen often. But when it comes to clashing, it seems that it will never get your inputs right, it's hilarious really. These clashes happen way more than you'd think and they only get more and more annoying.

 If one good thing can be said about the game, is that it looks pretty decent. Character models are more reminiscent of the manga than the anime, which I really liked, and they look pretty good. They aren't very detailed, but Bleach's designs are very simple to begin with. That said, there's a lot, and I mean a lot of clipping issues that kinda take away from them. The game also employs a very washed out color palette, something the Wii is infamous for, and I think it kinda plays against it. It's an anime game, make it colorful, make it pop! The music was pretty as well, although not memorable. The voice acting is good, but only the American dub is available. Newcomer Arturo Plateado is the worst of the bunch by far, his 'I'm disappearing!' line is hilariously terrible. 

 Bleach is a bad game. The combat offers no depth, and the clashes are infuriating, however, I do admit that some fun can be had by waggling, until the novelty wears off anyways. Even for fans, it's better to stay away, Arturo Plateado isn't worth it, and he makes a reappearance on the much better 'Bleach: The 3rd Phantom'.

 3.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: Bleach - Shattered Blade

 Let's play some terrible Wii Games!

 Whenever people talk bad about the Wii's library, I usually get defensive about it, like 'Screw you, dude, the Wii has great games, like No More Heroes, Xenoblade, The Last Story or Arc Rise Phantasia!(And if you skipped on this one due to the voice acting... you missed out.)'. But then I realized my problem... I cherry pick what I play, most of the time, so I know that I'm gonna play something decent. It was time to change that, so I decided to buy some terrible Wii games. Plus, Soul Reaver 2 hasn't arrived yet, so I can't finish the fight, and Jeanne D'Arc can only hold my interest during my breaks for so long...

 So, Bleach used to be good, remember? Soul Society is one of my favorite arcs in a shonen series EVER, yet it only went downhill from there. But let's go back in time when the DS was all the rage and I was in love with the Bleach fighting games on the DS. They were awesome, and I had a tiny bit of interest in Shattered Blade, but I knew that it was crap, so I opted to skip it, and wait for Versus Crusade(Which never arrived!). Which is why today I'm trying out Shattered Blade, and guess what? It ain't so bad! I mean, as a fighting game, it's terrible, and even, even if the game allowed for traditional joysticks, it would still suck. But as a game? It's not THAT bad. I mean, making a fighting game around waggling is all kinds of dumb, but the moment you stop taking the game seriously, you can have some fun with it.

 I mean, waggling the joystick around translates to dozens of slashes, thrusts and slices in a matter of seconds. It looks ridiculous, which makes it awesome. No, really, if this was anything but a fighting game, it could've made for a more interesting... something else. Basically, it boils down to this: It's a terrible 1/10 fighting game, it's probably the worst Bleach game out there, but as a game... I've played worse. But then again, I'm only done with Renji's story mode, so there's still time for it to get worse.

Month Overview: April 2015

 Games finished in April 2015:

Haunting Ground                                          8.5
Super Smash Bros. for 3DS                          8.5
Red Faction 2                                                7.0
Blood Omen - Legacy of Kain                      8.0
Legacy of Kain - Soul Reaver                       8.0

Kenka Bancho - Badass Rumble                   7.0

 Rather slow, but solid month. I was busy studying and playing Team Fortress 2 and getting stuck on that one mission in Jeanne D'Arc which kinda halted my progress. It's also a teensy bit early to close the month, but I very much doubt I'll be finishing any game before April ends, so it's appropriate, if hasty. The Legacy of Kainathon has begun and it's been a solid series so far, not counting Blood Omen 2, but seeing how little it adds to the LoK mithos... why count it in?

Game of April:

 'Tis true, Soul Reaver was not the game I rated the highest... but I just couldn't. I wanted to, I really, really did, because I enjoyed the characters and most of the gameplay oh so much, but there were glaring flaws that I just couldn't turn a blind eye to. That said, Raziel is probably one of the greatest characters ever created, and quite probably,a kind of protagonist that we won't be seeing any time soon. Freaky things like Raziel just don't sell as much as bald soldiers or underaged, oversexualized japanese girls do.

 Runner-up:

 Smash is Smash, and if you've a problem with it, better... Settle. It. In. SMASH! But yeah, it's everything I hoped it'd be. And there's really little else left for me to say!

Review #224: Kenka Bancho - Badass Rumble

 How to Man 101.

 Are you a man? After playing Kenka Bancho - Badass Rumble, you will be. A Bancho is the manliest man you can ever become, and one can only reach this status by being a complete and total badass. And this is what this game is about, becoming the baddest of the bad.

 After naming your Bancho, which can only be a guy, you are thrust into the town of Kyouto, and you make it your one goal to become the Baddest Bancho around. Not an easy task, there's 46 other Bancho with the same goal as you, plus, this is a 7-day school trip, so you are always running against time. As expected, there's not a whole lot story to the game, not that it needs to. The supporting cast is made up of your few school mates, which get a bit of development if you don't ditch the school activities, and the other Bancho, all which have their own distinct looks, but only get a few lines of dialogue. For what it's worth, the dialogue is excellent, they made it both funny and badass, and just like the setting itself, it's very Japanese, with lines such as 'Blame your own weakness!'. It's awesome.

 The game is about managing time. Every morning you are given the option of following the schedule and spend the morning doing the school touring, or ditching the class and hunt some Banchos. The town is made up of about 10 different districts, but moving around town will take up time. Besides your own two feet, you can use Buses, the subway or cabs. Cabs can take you anywhere, are faster than your own feet, but cost a lot, subways are cheap and fast, but there's only about 5 stops, while buses have more stops than the subway, but are very slow. The town of Kyouto is decently sized, but there's not a whole lot to do besides pummeling dudes. Sure, you can occasionally find 'secret' events, but they are just cutscenes, that may or may not trigger a fight or a decision that will slightly alter the ending dialogue.

 As a respectful Bancho, there are rules to follow if you want to be truly respected. For instance, while punks may use weapons(all behave the same though!), you shouldn't pick'em up. And while you can just sucker punch an enemy, the proper etiquette is to engage them with the MENCHI BEAM. The MENCHI BEAM is done by holding R, and it will 'challenge' whoever is in front of you. Most NPCs will cower in fear and run away, but if you use the MENCHI BEAM on punks, they will either bow down to you, fall down in defeat or challenge your MENCHI BEAM with their own MENCHI BEAM. That initiates a Stare down, a phrase will pop up, and a button-pressing mini-game will start in which you must press the correct buttons to form that phrase. It's funny the first couple of times, but it grows old. Fast. That said, if you fail the mini-game, you'll take damage, and failure to engage fights with the MENCHI BEAM will result in a drop to your Bancho rank.

 So, you just successfully insulted your enemy and got the first hit in, then comes the fighting. It's rather simple, Square is for weak attacks, Triangle for strong attacks and circle to grab your enemies. There's a few other mechanics like blocking, charging energy and your Super Attack, but they do little to flesh the system. Fighting is fairly... loose. The camera isn't too bad, you can move it around with the digital pad, but there's no way to lock on to your enemy, so you might have to slightly direct your attacks with the analog nub. The thing is... there's not much to the combo system, you won't be pulling any fancy 10 hits combos or anything like that. Simple is not necessarily bad, but it goes a long way into making it get a tad repetitive. There's no nuance, nothing to keep the fights interesting. But hey, defeated Banchos join your ranks, so you can call them to aid you in battle!

 That said, you can customize quite a few aspects of your Bancho. In Kyouto there's a barber shop and a clothes store, so you can make yourself into a Badass of your liking. Keep in mind that what clothes you wear affect the number of pockets in which you can carry items! But more interestingly, leveling up grants you stat points that you can manually slot on your attributes, and new moves. While travelling on wheels, or at the hotel's room, you can actually edit every single move in your moveset. They have different speeds and attack power, but it's still not a system that lends itself to creativity, as far as combos go anyways.

 I think it's clear by now that the game's biggest flaw is how repetitive it gets. Every day boils down to the same routine, fight random punks, which all fight the same even if they wear different clothes, until they drop an itinerary, then use that itinerary to find a Bancho and defeat him. Sometimes a Bancho will only appear on certain days, so you might have to find another itinerary. Fights never really change, once you find a strategy that works, you will continue to use it all the way to the end, because there's no need to change it up! Another issue is with the Town itself, there's no real map to tell you how to go from place to place, even while entering the Bus, which opens up a pseudo-map, there's some locations that aren't shown in the map. Lastly, the game is rather short, I beat it in about 6 hours, but if you rush through it, you could probably do it even quicker.

 However, the game does have some replay value. You probably won't be able to see everything on your first way through. Either you hunt all the Banchos, and will probably miss some, go to every School Tour, or dip one feet in both. There's many ways to go about each day, and the events on each day are different, which leads to many decisions on what to do! There's New Game+ in the game, and you keep everything but the items you had on your inventory, but you can choose to beat the Banchos you already beat, not that you need to. There's also a 'Night Out' mode, which can be played offline with another player, and while you don't level up in this mode, you can find souls that can be used to increase your stats.

 While it's not a particularly good looking game, it gets the job done. Animations are a bit on the stiff side, but not terribly so, character models are simple, but are easy on the eyes. Kyouto is a fairly simple looking town, but for such a mundane setting, they really needn't go crazy on the backdrops. Plus, it's a PSP game with no frame rate issues and a decent loading times, that's badass. There's not a whole lot of different music tracks, and what few there are aren't particularly noteworthy, but I guess they do fit the game.

 Kenka Bancho - Badass Rumble is a good game. It's fun, and while it's a bit short, there's plenty of replay value. There's not a whole lot of depth to the game, but I'm pretty sure they weren't aiming for that. For a portable game, it gets the job done, it's like a... Yakuza Lite.
 7.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Kenka Bancho - Badass Rumble

 Now that's one badass name for a game.

 Kenka Bancho is a game that will teach you how to be a MAN. It's all about manliness and badassery and being a manly badass and reaching new levels of badassery. Needless to say, this is a game I can get behind.

 I wasn't planning on playing something new this early, but Jeanne D'Arc's infamous 'protect the dauphin' mission kinda took its toll on me(4 tries and counting!), but Soul Reaver 2 hasn't arrived yet, so... Kenka Bancho it is.

 I love the fact that the game is VERY Japanese. In a good way, there's no fan service or pandering, yet it has ridiculous over the top things like the MENCHI BEAM. Because a real man starts a fight with the MENCHI BEAM, which initiates the STARE DOWN. And I love it.

 I can already predict that it will, probably, get a bit repetitive, but so far it's kinda fun. The fighting is a bit too simple, letting you customize your moveset is fun, but it's not like you can pull off anything fancy with the system. At least not now anyways, maybe once I level up my speed further? Whatev's, back to my quest of becoming the TOUGHEST MAN IN JAPAN.