Now Playing: Persona 5

 It's amazing.

I love the art, goddamn.

 So I'm 3:40 hours in and I'm loving it. I'm loving how Black is the new thematic color, I'm loving the new darker, more mature themes it's dealing with. I'm also loving how everything looks, with a very saturated color palette that looks incredible.

 I'm willing to forgive how Persona 4-ish the cast seems to be, with Ryuji being pretty much Yosuke, Morgana being a stand-in for Teddy and Ryuji and Morgana behaving just like Yosuke and Teddie. Ann seems like a fusion between Chie and Yukiko, with Yukiko's looks and personality but with Chie's bravado. But I adored Persona 4's cast and dynamics, so I'm willing to let it slide this one time... as long as Persona 6 doesn't try the same formula.

 Gameplay seem pretty good, although I'm not a fan of demon conversations. I like the system in Shin Megami Tensei, but I'd prefer keeping both series separate, something that Shin Megami Tensei IV failed to do.

 All in all, I'm mighty hopeful for this one. Seems to be everything I would've wanted out of Persona 6. Doing away with personal shadow confrontations, something that made the P4 cast so endearing is ballsy to say the least, and I'm not too much of a fan of this Thief motif, but I'm keeping an open mind.

Review #553: Dissidia Final Fantasy NT

Final Fantasy's 'nice try'.

Geeze, just cut it out with Lightning, nobody likes here games!

 I liked Dissidia on the PSP, but I had a few gripes with it. I'm happy to report that Dissidia on the PS4 is pretty much exactly what I wanted from Dissidia on the PSP and then some. Critics have been harsh on this game, but that's probably because they can't wrap their head around the fact that this game is an Arcade game and not a triple A open-world, story-driven epic. Here, you pick up the controller and you fight, and that's it.

 The game plays pretty much just like it did on the PSP, but it axed the EX modes and introduced 3 on 3 battles. This is how you play the game: Each team has three stocks, or respawns, so the first team to suffer three losses loses the match. You go about this by landing Bravery Attacks, attacks that increase the Bravery number. Once you're happy with your bravery you then use an HP attack to translate your bravery into HP damage. Getting hit means you lose bravery, so you have to think twice. Will you accumulate a large number of Bravery points in order to kill an enemy in a single blow, or will you slowly chip away at an enemy's health? Successfully landing an HP attack will revert it back to its base, 1000, so it's not like you can just spam high-damage attacks. One of my peeves with the first game was customization, since I didn't like customizing movesets, and that's gone! Each character has a single moveset set in stone, which is great since there's filler. You only get to pick between three HP attacks for each character. Furthermore, each character has its own unique skill, executed with Triangle, as well as two slots for buffs and debuffs, done with Triangle+Up or Triangle+Down. These triangle skills run on a cooldown, so you have to be careful with them. Periodically 'Summon Cores' will spawn that, when broken, allow you to bring a Summon into battle to aid you.

The character roster is fantastic, even if it's mostly made out of pretty boys.

 Gameplay is fast and frantic and I love it. This is an arena-fighter with 6 combatants running around at the same time, but the game runs very smoothly, only dipping, and very little, when it gets too chaotic. It can be a bit tough to get a hang of the camera, L2 to target a foe on the left, R2 on the right, both to target the nearest foe and hold one of those to aim at a Summon Core, but you'll get the hang of it. Besides normal battling there're also Core Battles, in which you must fight to destroy the enemy's core while they attempt to destroy yours. What the game could've used would've been more modes. Give me a real practice mode in which I can fight a dummy. Give me an elimination match, where once a character dies he's gone for good. Give me something more.

 It also lacks more customization. Why can't I increase the amount of respawns per match? Summons are neat an' all, but it seems like as soon as a Summon Core appears everyone abandons what they are doing and runs towards them... how about letting me deactivate summons? There's a HUGE soundtrack, with great tracks, why not let me pick a song before a battle? But, worst of all, this is a fighting game... with no Offline Versus. Alright, so having two screens at the same time may have taxed the machine... so make it so that it can only be played in 2-on-2 or 1-on-1 battles. Turn down the graphics, do what you have to, but the game needed a Offline versus mode.

There's so much going on at the same time, and the framerate is SO smooth.

 The first thing you'll have to do upon booting up the game is entering the Gauntlet mode, in which you fight against 6 teams of enemies. And you have to do this, because you have to grind in order to unlock story mode. I'm not kidding. Story mode is unlocked piece by piece as you earn Memory Pieces, which are earned by leveling up your Player Level which is done by playing Gauntlet Mode over and over again. Or going Online. Doing offline single VS CPU battles doesn't give you anything, which is incredibly dumb. Regardless, you'll be grinding Gauntlet Mode a lot, because not only do you need Memory Pieces, you also need to level up individual characters because... the allied CPU is incredibly stupid and you need to level them up, by using them or having them on your team so that the CPU becomes more proficient with them. And you need to level them up, because it's not unusual for your CPU allies to do nothing as all three enemies gang up on you. You also need to grind for Character Levels in order to unlock alternate HP attacks. You also need to grind for Money if you want to purchase any cosmetics.

 Get ready to put in about 3 hours of Gauntlet if you want a single costume. Considering a successful run through a Gauntlet earns you about 600 gil and costumes are 10800 a piece... And weapons are 7600 each, so.... you're in it for the long haul. There're also in-game loot boxes, which thankfully can't even be purchased with real money, in which you may earn collectibles, but you'll be earning crap mostly. And it's a shame, because each character has about 2-3 extra weapons, as well as three colors for each of their two costumes. There's a lot of great stuff to unlock in this game, but the grind is ungodly tedious. It also should've made this customization more snappy, as it stands, you have to set presets for Skills, costumes and weapons for each individual character. This means that, when you're on the character select screen, you must press Triangle to enter customization mode, then press 'character', then find you character on the list and then go to 'EX Skill', 'Costume' and 'Weapon'. That's a lot of unnecessary menus. Presets are nice to have as options, not as something mandatory. They should've given players fast menus, like you do when picking CPU allies or enemies in mock battles, in order to pick a costume, weapon and skills.

It looks like a lot to take into, but it's very easy to get into the groove of things.

 And then, lastly, we've got the story mode, which is one of the game's biggest disappointments, next to the lack of offline versus. Unlocking it is a pain in the butt, plaything through boss battles is a pain in the butt thanks to useless allies, the final boss is a pain in the butt because he cheaply spams HP attacks... but none of that is what really makes it disappointing, rather, it's the story itself. It's garbage, the story is garbage. Which would've been alright, since this is a 'what if' game, but what it really needed was characters interacting with each other. These are characters that had, most of them anyways, a single game, so why not let us enjoy their personalities again, as they interact with one another? But nope, dialogue and character interactions are short and uninteresting. The badguys barely get any screen time, might make a quick quip here and there, and then they disappear. Final Fantasy I-X get 2 characters each(IV gets a third one, Kain), but the remaining eight characters, of which Kain is a part of, don't even appear on the story mode. There's a lot of stuff that is poorly explained or poorly written, specifically the Lightning/Zidane branch of the story, Lightning and Squall just disappear never to be seen again until the finale. It's a poor story, with poor fanservice.

 Here's the thing, the game is a blast to play. You've 28 iconic, and some not as iconic, heroes and villains from Final Fantasy, and there's so much glee to have as you see all these fantastic characters fight each other looking great thanks to current-gen graphics. And characters are very different from each other, not as much as, say, Guilty Gear, but you'll find that you'll be using different strategies with different characters as you experiment with their movesets. And as much as I had to grind, it never felt like a grind because I was having fun mowing down hordes of enemies. I just wish that getting the cosmetics you want was easier, and selecting your set-ups was faster than having to fix 3 presets per character, going through various menus. But here's the thing, where the game falters is on all the fluff, what really matters, the core gameplay, they got oh, so right. I don't think I'll ever tough the Story Mode again, but Gauntlet Battles? Count me in. Just wish that Offline single Sparring Battles would give points and that the game had a 2-Player offline mode.

 You know, as much as I complain about the game.... I absolutely adored it. It feels a great deal like Gundam Extreme VS, which is a good thing since that's one of my favorite games out there. I love the character cast and I love the gameplay. Would more bells and whistles would've been nice? Definitely. But they nailed the core gameplay just right, and it's a very easy game to just pick-up and play, which is one of the things I value the most in a game. And I understand why so many people dislike it, most people have moved forwards from these Arcade games, this is not what most people expect out of a game.
 But it's exactly what I love. Now gimme a 2 player offline mode and we're cool, Squeenix.
 9.0 out of 10

Review #552: Disney Infinity 2.0

 Create your own fun.... or have none.

The cover is as boring as the game without the online servers!

 Well, after playing Disney Infinity I can safely say... that I understand why they went under so fast. Welcome to Disney's second foray into the toys-to-life craze that Skylanders started. The big addition are Marvel characters and a few tweaks to the toybox mode. Is it worth it? No, not now.

 Here's Infinity's biggest pratfall, one that should've been addressed here, one that should've been addressed on their third and final game: This is not a game, this is an investment. Firstly, unless you buy one of the three 'Playsets' there won't be any story mode content for you to play. And there're only three of them: Avengers, Spider-man and Guardians of the Galaxy. If you have no playset, you have no pre-made content for you to play. Infinity 1 had even more playsets, but none of them are compatible with Infinity 2.0. Why? Nobody knows, but that means that there's very little premade content for you to play. And the cherry on top? Only select characters can play playsets. Only the Guardians may play their playset, only the Avengers may play theirs, etc. New characters like Stitch and Malificient? Too bad, no story content for them. There're a few 'minigame' hexagon toys that you can buy, but... it's pure luck since they came in blind packs. Now a days you can just buy them off ebay, but it still, you have to pony up more cash if you want actual content to play.

Even the Hulk can ride vehicles!

 Alright, so if there's no content, what can you do? Create your own in the game's signature 'Toybox' mode. Here you can select from various pieces and create your own world, your own minigames, like racing, your own battle arenas, etc, etc. The tools are relatively in-depth, allowing you to connect a few objects via trigger-logic and what not, but you have to sit through various explanations or read online to get the full gist of it. Back in the day you could download other Toyboxes, some made by Disney itself, but the Servers are gone. There're a few quick templates you can generate to get you started, but it's still quite boring. Plus, most stuff in the Editor must be purchased with sparks, and grinding for sparks can take a while, it's easier if you go through playsets... but there're only three of them, and you can only use so many characters on those. So, yeah, the Toybox can be a source of fun if you like playing things you created, but otherwise? There's none to be had here, you can't even share your creations with others!

 As for the Playsets, they are well made, open-worldish adventures with quite a few missions each. The worlds are fairly large, the missions are entertaining and the cutscenes are neat. It's a shame only select characters can play these. Characters also act as lives, if you die on these, you can simply put another toy and continue until your previous character recuperates.

Donald duck has no playset. Have fun figuring out what to do with him.

 I think what hurts the most is how good the base mechanics are. Characters are similar, but have their own quirks. Some can fly, and boy is it fun to fly around as Iron-man! Others can climb on walls or what have you. Each character is also able to carry objects, like enemies, guns, wands, etc or get on various vehicles, from cars to helicopters, and have simple parkour abilities that make traversing the environment a blast. Each character also has their own exclusive skill tree, in which you can spend points upon leveling up to tailor characters to your liking. It also helps that the toys themselves are very high quality and look great, it's a shame not many of them get story-content to play. And that's why Skylanders is infinitely better: you have proper stages and levels to play through, your fun doesn't depend on wasting time toiling with an editor.

 Lastly, the game runs very poorly on the PS3. Toyboxes begin to underperform faster than I would've liked, so build complex worlds at your peril. Playsets suffer too, sometimes sound may lag behind because the PS3 struggles to process everything that's happening. It's no Xenoverse(Ps3), but boy does it struggle. At the end of the day, I'd advise people to stay clear of Infinity, only purchase it if you want an excuse to buy the toys, because they are very cheap now a days, and they make for great decor.
 4.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Tomb Raider II

 Now with less tombs.

Those breasts look weird.

 Tomb Raider II was my first Tomb Raider game, and one I liked even more than the third one, although I clearly remember thinking The Last Revelation was the best one. Before playing it again, I learnt that the game is considered to be very hard, making for an uphill climb all the way until Chronicles, when it gets easier. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, I just got through the first level and had little to no problems.

 The ability to save anywhere, something that made the PC version so much better, is present here which is a godsend. And boy, am I gonna miss it when it's gone in 3. It's kinda awe inspiring just how much better this game looks. The controls have been tweaked a bit, and I keep accidentally wasting flares when I want to sidestep!

Review #551: Enter the Matrix

 No, do not go inside, stay out! TAKE THE BLUE PILL!

The cover doesn't look as good as they thought, I bet.

 Enter the Matrix was a very ambitious third-person shooter that did something to stand out among other licensed games: The Wachowski sisters(Then brothers) wrote the script for the game, and, alongside the cast and crew from the movies, filmed exclusive scenes for this game. If that doesn't give it brownie points I don't know what will.

 The story takes place at the same time as Matrix Reloaded(Matrix 2), but follows Ghost and Niobe as they work behind the scenes, and a few times alongside Morpheus and his crew. Neo makes but a few, unvoiced appearances. The story itself is nothing to write home about, but the 40 or so minutes of exclusive footage were, and still are, a fantastic treat for fans. Ghost and Niobe have pretty much the same stages, but there're a few variations here and there, Ghost even gets to spar against Trinity. Still, these differences aren't enough to make two playthroughs worth it, so playing as just one character will suffice for most people. There're plenty of audiovisual bugs all the way throughout, there's an audio glitch exclusive to the PS2 version that makes dialogue and sound play twice at different speeds, which is very grating to the ears, and thankfully, not too common.

Melee combat is the best thing about this game.

 There's no way to hide it, this game is an obvious beta. Besides the audiovisual bugs, you'll notice how janky the entire game feels. Melee combat consists of characters flailing their limbs about, which is hilarious, running and climbing animations are awful, and things like targeting enemies with guns being very awkward, as guns are very inaccurate. Stage transitions can be weird, some stages may even last a few seconds and consist from going from a door to another.... This is not a well made game, but the publisher is to blame as they rush development. Not to worry, as Shiny would redeem themselves a few years later with Path of Neo.

 As far as melee combat goes, looking so hilariously bad actually makes it pretty entertaining. You have punches, kicks, disarms, throws, counters and a few other neat manouvers. The animations for the attacks are almost good, you can tell that with a few polishing it could've been great, and removing some of the jankiness, like kicking a fallen enemy making him fly backwards a ridiculously long distance, or how hitting dying enemies makes them get back on their feet. It's a mess, but it's a fun mess. You can take out your guns at any time, but they lack oomph and their accuracy is suspect, so I didn't use them too much, and when I did, I wasn't having as much fun as I was with the flailing limbs. It's probably one of the first games to feature regenerating health.... and it also has medkits, which makes dying very hard. You also have a recharging focus gauge to use bullet time, which makes dodging stuff and delivering pain very simple.

Focus makes dodging bullets and shooting enemies all too easy.

 There're a few dumb racing segments, in which you'll drive as Niobe or shoot as Ghost. It's more fun shooting as Ghost, but Niobe is such a poor driver that she may cost you the stage, since some enemies are indestructible and shooting at them does nothing, so you depend on Niobe pulling through. A few other stages consist on running away from agents, since they are too tough to take down, and this can range from fun to dumb. If Agent Smith catches you it's possible to get stuck in a loop in which you can't get away from his grabs until he kills you. A few other stages even have infinitely spawning enemies, so you might as well just run anyways.

 And the level design isn't very good. Some stages go on and on, and they reuse assets within themselves oh so much that it feels like you are going in circles or through identical passages. The camera can be a big pain in the butt, a few times you are expected to go down a few levels, but unless you enter the awkward first person camera mode, there's no way to check below if there's a platform. A lot of times the camera will zoom in on awkward angles for no reason what so ever. Don't even let me get started on overhead cables, twice your character will need to grab from cables above in order to cross chasms, but it always feels unsafe since you can't jump in place, but rather, do a forward jump and if you don't angle it right, you will fall to your doom.

Or you can use your focus on 1-on-1 fights, your choice.

 There's also the then-praised hacking mini-game, through which you can use cheats or unlock halfway finished stuff, like a fighting minigame or art and extras. Honestly? Too much of a drag, and you must go through it every time you want to use these 'rewards' again. I didn't care for it.

 There's a certain 'The Room'-like quality to it that makes the game enjoyable in all the wrong ways. It's poorly designed, looks awful, is glitchy and, clearly, is unfinished but there's a little bit of fun to be had when flailing your limbs against other flailing limbs. I can also appreciate how they went with side characters instead of Neo, which helped make the side cast more endearing, and the fact that they filmed stuff just for this game is something to be commended. It IS a bad game, but if you like so-bad-it's-good games, you might get a kick out of it.
 3.5 out of 10

Review #550: InFamous - Second Son

  If we're gonna keep making the Good ending canon might as well call it Famous.

Now with smoke powers. Which behave pretty much exactly like electricity did.

 InFamous was one of the three big successors on the PS3, running alongside Resistance and Uncharted. Uncharted went for realism(Kinda), Resistance went after a sci-fi war setting and InFamous went with the super hero genre. The first game was alright, but it wasn't until inFamous 2 that the franchise hit it big. A new generation of consoles later and inFamous returns to hit the scene, with a new protagonist, smooth framerate and a new... nothing else, really.

 Remember Cole? Not many people do, but after his sacrifice only a few Conduits survived. Delsin Rowe, the new protagonist, soon discovers that he is a conduit too, with the power to copy other powers, which makes him a prime candidate for the DUP forces to capture him, like they do with other Conduits. Not that it matters, since Augustine, head of the DUP, and a very sadistic lass that uses Conduit powers to capture other Conduits, is trying to capture three escaped Conduits, even if she has to torture Delsin's entire tribe. So now Delsin, and his normie brother Reggie, join together to copy Augustine's powers in order to save their tribe from the effects of Augustine's powers. I actually really liked the story and the characters. Delsin is a bit of a prick, a delinquent that usually gets into trouble, a stark contrast with his cop brother Reggie, and they butt heads a lot, which makes their relationship quite endearing. It's interesting, because I think neither character would be all that interesting by themselves, but together? You want to see them interact and follow their journey. Secondary characters, like Fetch, are a bit 'safe', displaying somewhat cliched personalities you've already seen before, but they are decently written.

Enemy DUP forces are armed with with Concrete power, but they are no match for smoke.

 The game plays a lot like Infamous 2, maybe a bit too much like it. It's a big, open-world game that has you doing heroics, or villainous deeds, as you hone your powers. If you played any InFamous installment before, you'll be right at home here. Square does melee attacks, R2 can be used to shoot your weakest proyectile power, R1 is your missile equivalent, L2 aims, the touchpad is used to drain sources for energy(ammo), regenerating health, yadda yadda. Even the way you traverse the world is the same, with X doubling as a jump or a hovering power, with the added skill of being able to climb almost any surface by just mashing X button against a wall until Delsin gets to the top. It's pretty much the same game it's been since InFamous 1. The Karma system is pretty much the same, kill civilians, or surrendered enemies, to increase your bad Karma, or restrain enemies instead of killing them to earn good karma. Higher levels of Karma unlock the ability to purchase new karma-appropriate enhancements by spending collectible blast shards, same old, same old.

 That said, the game has expanded in one area. Delsin can copy powers, and unlike Cole who only got to merge a few Ice or Lava powers with his Electricity, Delsin gets entire new movesets. You start with Smoke, which you can recharge by draining any smoke source, and the power works exactly like Cole's electricity, but with Smoke. Instead of EMP grenades you get a smoke grenade, the electricity 'shotgun' is done with smoke, etc etc. Buut then you'll unlock Neon, recharged by draining Neon from sources such as Neon signs, which is a slower power but with sniping capabilities, and gives you the ability to run at lightspeed. Video can be recharged from antenas, and gives you slower, but stronger, melee attacks, better aerial traversal powers(Delsin grows wings!) and machine-gun like proyectiles. The last power, which people treat as a spoiler but is oh so obvious, is Concrete, which... sucks. You get it in the very last story mission, and if you've already done all the side content... there's no use for it and very few ways to drain it. I bet all these powers sound great, and they kinda are, but... there's no easy way to switch between powers besides finding a source and draining it. It can be a bit annoying when you want a particular power but there's no source nearby, so more often than not, you will not have the power you'd like for the appropriate situation.

 Impressive drawdistance and smooth framerate makes it a treat to explore.

 The game offers about 20 different story missions, but they go by very fast. The side content is a bit more meaty, with two islands divided in about 13 different zones that you can liberate from the DUP. Liberating a city means doing every single mission, and collecting every blast shard, in it and then doing the DUP Showdown mission. Blast Shards appear on the map as soon as you defeat the DUP SUV in the city, so they are very simple to collect. As for the side missions, they are very repetitive. You'll be doing a lot of graffiti art, using the Dual Shock 4's motion sensors, finding 'hidden Agents', destroying cameras and hidden cameras and not much else. There are about 6 different mission types that you'll be repeating over and over and over again. Then there are about 10 different Karma missions, 5 evil and 5 good, that don't help liberate the city but help you raise your Karma gauge, and this are simple things like pressing triangle to save injured civilians or killing protesters.

 When it boils down to it, InFamous Second Son is slightly disappointing. Besides the new cast of characters, might as well play inFamous 2 and you'd play pretty much the same exact game. The repetitive side content didn't bother me too much because the game itself, like Infamous 2 before it, is a blast to play, and traversing the city with all your powers is so much fun. It's a shame the game is so short, which makes the lackluster side-content stand out so much more.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Enter the Matrix

 It's very glitchy inside the Matrix.

Two pills, one game/

 Enter the Matrix is a game I used to... love when I was younger. I don't remember if I knew about how badly it scored, but man, I had a blast with it. I just began a playthrough as Niobe, although I plan on doing both characters, and boy, is it janky!

 Movement is very spotty, it's impossible to move precisely, and the running animation is way too exaggerated. Combat is a mixed bag, animations are very smooth, but the feedback isn't very convincing... although it's still fun in a 'this is so bad it's good' kinda way. Shooting is just lame though. Oh, and the double-audio-at-different-speeds PS2 glitch is sublime.

 Basically, I know the game is bad, but I'm having a weird kind of fun with it. Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's just so bad it's good, I dunno yet!