It's hard to believe that we're at the end of the year, let alone the end of the decade. When this decade began, I was finishing my last two quarters of college and was eager to jump straight into the Electronic Entertainment Industry right away so that I can finally start learning about game development. I was filling out papers for the JET program to study abroad in Japan in hopes of getting a different perspective in life. I was still dead set on working with concept art, animation, and design. I had my whole future planned out and I thought I knew where I was headed.
Between that time and now, I've worked for an international online gaming company for 8-months, participated in two game jams to help out friends from the Videogame Development Club that were still at UCI at the time, had 4 games published, switched over to music and began studying composition and production, and ended the decade with going to Japan for two weeks, and finally getting my first real job for two short weeks this past month since 2011. Now my life is full of uncertainty and doubt. Despite that, I know I'm stubborn and will probably continue to work towards getting into the game industry as I improve my abilities with working on music and continue to study game design. This decade didn't go according to plan and I feel like I didn't make as much progression in my life as I had hoped I would. But it's not all bad!
After getting laid off from my first job in 2011, there wasn't very much for me to do as I kept looking for work and submitting applications. At the very least, I was still able to play games with a friend online from time to time. But near the beginning of 2012, some friends from UCI started playing League of Legends and we all brought friends together to play in-house games. For an entire year between 2012-2013, I played LoL every night and got to know all these strangers who were friends of friends. After arranging a meet up in 2013 and hanging out with them in person, we all had gotten closer and have since then deviated off to playing other games other than LoL. It's rare to go throughout a night without joining chat to play games or even just chat for a bit ever since then. I've met so many new people and made so many new friends in that manner that I find myself lucky to be in such a unique position. I think that's the greatest story I'd have to tell from this decade.
I never imagined that I'd be working with music as a career path, and yet I spent most of my time throughout the day practicing music, making music, arranging and remixing music, and constantly learning something new out of it. With that, I was fulfilling a lot of childhood dreams I had of recreating my favorite videogame songs. It's been a strange decade, because there's a lot I'm disappointed in and regret. And yet, it felt like such a fulfilling time in my life as I reflect upon it.
This past month has been pretty hectic, mainly because of the job I took up that pretty much kept me busy throughout the entire day. Originally, I had planned on finishing everything in 12 days and so I worked on Saturday and Sunday for first week as well in order to complete all my tasks by the second Friday. Unfortunately, some plans were changed and I got a lot more work and was given more time to do it. Not wanting to drag it out, I worked harder each day instead and added an extra 2 days. It was an interesting experience, but it's definitely not something I'd want to do in the long term. (I'm purposely not talking about it too much since I signed an NDA and don't know how much I can actually talk about it without getting in trouble).
Two days after my last day of work, the Steam Winter Sale began. I really did try to keep my spendings to a minimum this year, especially after my Japan trip. I did a good job throughout the year, but it was all for nothing after these past two months of spending. Despite my efforts to keep the amount spent for the sale, I still bought quite a few games. I'm even thinking of picking up a few more before the sale ends in two days (I'm in this deep already.....). I've been playing games with my friends when I can and have had little to no time to play my single-player games this entire month. I finally finished my last two remixes for the year:
I'm probably going to finish up my last video project, create a new one for all the games I've played the past few years, plan out the upcoming year, and then finally just relax and catch up on some games because I feel like I haven't stopped working or just "doing things" since the beginning of November and I feel really burnt out.
I'm currently experiencing some discomfort with my nose cavity and throat feeling dry, a slight headache, fatigue, and some queasiness in my stomach. I hope I'm not getting sick leading up to the new year and new decade. I did all that I could this year and this decade and perhaps I'll reflect on it a bit more, but it's almost time to start planning for a new future.
Happy New Year 2020!
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Prioritizing my time
I can't believe we're at the end of November already. This month has blasted by fairly quickly as I wait for my temporary job to start. The date has been set and I'm starting very soon. As I wait, I've been working on a few remix projects, trying to finish certain games, testing out remote play on Steam with my friends, working on videos, and been going out with my parents a lot more often this month. I feel like there's so much demanding my attention right now, especially since I'm about to start working. Despite working for a short duration, I'm probably going to have very little time for anything else other than some gaming. I think that's why I've been pushing myself so much this past month to get things done before then. Gaming is also quite packed as some unexpected surprises changed my plans for these last two months. Namely, I found out that Halo: Master Chief Collection for Steam PC was finally up for pre-order with Halo: Reach releasing on December 3rd, Kingdom Under Fire 2 was releasing on Steam, and Blaster Master Zero 2 was coming to Steam PC. I had already planned on picking up Darksiders Genesis and wanted to finish Darksiders 2 and 3 before it releases on December 5th. Not to mention, BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle Version 2.0 with its 9 new characters released on November 21st, so I've been playing that the past few days. It's no wonder this month felt so short. With that said, I'm diving right back into it and I'll be spending a lot of time researching, planning and buying things for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas.
So what I'm seeing in my priority list is:
-Finish the three remixes I was working on this week
-Finish video projects this week
-Finish Darksiders 2 & 3 this week
-Work for possibly 2 weeks starting next week on the temporary job
-Play through Darksiders Genesis and Halo: Reach those two weeks after work is done each day
-Start and finish that drawing project after those two weeks
-After all that, relax, reflect, and prepare for 2020 and plan out what I want to do next year
So what I'm seeing in my priority list is:
-Finish the three remixes I was working on this week
-Finish video projects this week
-Finish Darksiders 2 & 3 this week
-Work for possibly 2 weeks starting next week on the temporary job
-Play through Darksiders Genesis and Halo: Reach those two weeks after work is done each day
-Start and finish that drawing project after those two weeks
-After all that, relax, reflect, and prepare for 2020 and plan out what I want to do next year
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Let's talk about Code Vein [SPOILERS]
It's been a VERY long time since I've had the opportunity to just sit down and talk about an individual game that I've played. The last time I was able to do that was April of last year for Furi. October is nearing its end and went by fairly quickly. I wasn't able to upload any new audio work, but I've been working on multiple projects this past month as I still wait for that job my friend offered me to come through (still no official word). I'm pretty excited with two of the projects I've been working on as they involve some stuff I've never done before. I'll upload it once I finish it.
Code Vein [PC]
I spent the first half of October playing Code Vein. Starting up the game and hearing this song during tutorial immediately set the tone of the game and I instantly fell in love with the song. It's a sort of haunting melancholy that's both beautiful and sad at the same time. Code Vein is an Action-RPG that is heavily inspired by the Souls-like games with an emphasis on difficulty and character growth; however, it has a strong narrative that reveals itself little by little rather than making it sparse and ambiguous like the Souls games do. I went into the game hoping for a familiar yet unique experience to the Souls-like formula. I got what I wanted and possibly more.
Let's start off with the easiest thing for me to talk about: the graphics. Those familiar to games published by Bandai Namco won't be surprised by the strong anime style as its art style. Despite the post-apocalyptic setting, the color choices and art style really stands out and has distinguishing themes to each area, character, and enemy. An interesting design choice for portraying memories is rather than recreating a scene, the player walks through a series of floating environment with statues resembling the characters are shown with the scene played back through means of audio. Whether it was an artistic choice or a practical one to avoid the need to create dozens of cutscenes, I found it to be an effective and intimate story telling experience.
I'd like to talk about music next. I knew right when I heard the Title Screen music and the Tutorial Theme that the music was going to be great. Upon hearing the tutorial theme and knowing that the same studio that developed God Eater created Code Vein, I was pretty sure the music was composed by Go Shiina. He has a knack for creating music that is emotionally evocative, unique, and sounding bigger than life. I'd like talk about the "Tutorial Theme" in particular as it plays a HUGE role throughout the entire game. It has been given the name of "Memory of the Lost" by fans as it only plays whenever the player dives into the Memory of an individual who has become a "Lost". The song has many variations played throughout the game: One played by a cello, one played by a violin, one with vocals (the one linked above), one that's only piano, one that's played in a major key and sounds happier with a cello, and possibly a few other versions. It has a strong link to "memories" and each time you dive into one, the music brings the player into that mindset that they're revisiting a scene from someone's past. I don't think the memory diving scenes would be nearly as effective without the music. Another thing I really want to talk about is how the music evolves and is reactive to situations in both story and combat. When walking through a memory, the song could start off with the cello version and set a somber tone. As the player walks further into the memory and the dialogue becomes more intense, it might change to the violin version. And then it could switch to the vocal version near the end if it reveals something important. All this is done by smoothly transitioning between the different versions of the same song through a simple fade-in, fade-out process. Combat is the same where no music is played while exploring, a simple beat is played when fighting, and the music transitions and becomes more intense as more enemies approach the player. Music is really taken into consideration for design and is a pivotal component to the overall experience for Code Vein. It enhances the story telling, gets the player excited, and gives audio cues to things that happen around the player. Despite all my praise for the music, I have to admit that the soundtrack doesn't have a ton of memorable tunes asides from a few individual pieces. It's just that the music is so powerful and synonymous to the overall experience that I can't help but praise it.
Now for the most important topic: gameplay. If you've played a Dark Souls game or similar to it, you'll know what to expect. Your attacks and actions are a bit slower and deliberate from your usual action game, enemies hit hard, bosses are challenging, and there is a lot of playstyles to choose from. I got into the game not knowing much about the gameplay other than that it's like a Souls game. What I wanted was a unique take on the Souls-like formula and what gave that unique experience is the class system. Contrary to your typical RPG, the class system isn't the player chooses and sticks with for the rest of the game. Classes are acquired throughout the game from NPCs or from vestiges left from the "Lost". I found this design choice to be a good way to bring characters into the narrative. With each class that the player gains, the strength and memories of each individual becomes are part of them as each class labels the name of the character they're acquired from. It's such a profound method of emphasizing the significance of each individual the player meets throughout their journey. With each class comes a set array of skills, skills that can be mastered through proficient use. By mastering a skill, they can be used on different classes as long as they meet the required stats with the exception of a few skills that's exclusive to a class. Character levels are fixed and so there's no dumping attribute points into certain stats for specific classes or playstyles. Rather, everything is determined by what the player equips (Weapons, armor, class, and passive and active skills). Because the player can freely switch between all equips, there is no such thing as locking into a playstyle for an individual character. The player can switch to whatever class or playstyle they wish as many times as they want which is part of what keeps the game fresh throughout the entire playthrough. One unique mechanic that isn't found in Souls-like games (but is found in Hunter-like games) is the ability to bring a computer-AI partner along. The game throws a lot of enemies at the player, and so having a partner can help split the aggro, provide back-up, and alleviate the difficulty of the game. It is possible to play the game without a partner, but I hear it's way harder and feels clear the game was balanced around having a partner. Partners are NPCs that you meet along the way that are important to the story. They're actually really smart. They do a lot of damage, some make excellent front-liners, they save you from death when you get a lethal injury, they point out points of interests like enemies and pathways, and they will try their best to protect you. This also adds to the narrative as their banter and support gives depth to each character and how the player perceives them. Bosses are diverse and dynamic with some of them having a strong resemblance to bosses from Dark Souls. Most of them aren't particularly difficult with a partner and definitely easier with a friend joined in as well. However, I hear they can be even harder than Dark Souls bosses if played solo or on New Game+. There is one thing in particular that the game doesn't do very well: Multiplayer. It's structured a lot like Dark Souls where a player can be summoned and one good thing about Code Vein is that you can set a password so that you specifically summon your friend. The problem is that once a player is summoned, neither player can use the mistles (checkpoints) to replenish curatives. The summoned player must be at or beyond the summoner's progress in the story and can't be summoned into a game that's past their progression in the story (which makes sense). When a boss is defeated, the summoned player is kicked back into their own game and doesn't get to watch the cinematics (if there are any) afterwards. And only the host keeps the progress while the summoned player only gets to keep their Haze (Souls / currency for leveling). Because of this, friends can't experience the game together in a streamlined manner where instead of playing a "co-op" game, it's more like "dropping in to help out". I can go on and on about gameplay such as level design being uninspired, but I mostly enjoyed the gameplay with a few gripes here and there.
[HERE COMES THE SPOILERS] And finally, there's the story. I was honestly not expecting such a strong narrative out of a Souls-like game. Much like God Eater, the world is in ruins and people live in fear. In the world of Code Vein, the earth is invaded by these creatures called "horrors" and humanity was looking for a way to fight back. While creating a biological weapon being tested on a girl, the experiment goes wrong and the girl becomes this unstoppable being that destroyed everything in its path. With this newfound threat, humanity developed a parasite that would allow compatible humans to become immortal so that they could take on the transformed girl dubbed the "Queen". With the elimination of the "Queen", the undying humans now known as revenants faced a new problem. Revenants could no longer die, go hungry, or face any normal human problems; however, they have a thirst for blood and would turn into a monster called the "Lost" should they succumb to the thirst and frenzy. With a barrier enclosed around the city, a red mist that causes frenzy, and trees that provide "blood beads" becoming scarce for revenants to survive on, the world becomes more bleak by the day. With the stage set, the player wakes up with no memory of the past and thrust into the dying world of Code Vein.
The game starts off with a mysterious girl leading the player to a tree of blood beads to feed on with a few rowdy bunch capturing them and later forcing the player to look for more blood beads. Capture and forced to scout for more blood beads with the player is a man named Oliver. Oliver is kind and mild mattered while being able to convincingly fight off the monsters you encounter along the way. But due to a small bit of carelessness, Oliver is attacked and has his breathing mask damaged. I was under the impression that Oliver was going to stay with you throughout the entire game. It is to my surprise that you meet another individual along the way out of the cavernous depths and end up having to fight Oliver at the end. With Oliver turning into a "Lost" and defeating him, a bright red crystal is left behind. Upon Louis', the other man you meet, advice, I try to walk away from it. But as game design dictates, I picked up the glowing shard as it impales my hand and thrusts us into the memory of Oliver. We see that Oliver did not live an easy life as a revenant and that he did things he regret. In the end, all he wanted was to do what was right and survive. It was sad and heartbreaking to see everything that transpired up to the point of his end, and that's what really set my expectation for the rest of the game. I love the concept of vestiges both as a narrative and as a game design. The memories of an individual shed a little more of the story, creates a much more intimate connection of the character to the player, and creates a significance to the power the player gains. Throughout the game, the story isn't clear and throws a lot of information that doesn't quite make sense at first. I generally dislike a story being so ambiguous and told piece by piece in a backwards manner, and yet I found myself entirely engrossed to the world and its people in Code Vein. There's so much build up and it keep making itself more clear with each passing memory that you visit until you get near the end and finally realize what this entire game is about: the prelude to God Eater. The "horrors" that humans couldn't fight back were the Aragami all along! That one moment blew my mind and made everything so clear to me. I even made a joke early in the game asking my friend if "Code Vein takes in the same world as God Eater because there's a bugarally doll". So I was especially shocked to find out it really was in the same world. I do think the writing often suffers from the tropes found in a lot of Japanese animé and videogames, but the overall story and the way it was told was good enough that I forgive it. I'm split on how I feel about the differing endings though. I didn't know how the endings worked on my first playthrough and was locked out of the true ending before I found out. So I got the neutral ending, then the bad ending before I played a third time to get the true ending. The neutral ending felt like it could be a sad "true" ending for the game where the player takes the responsibility left behind by Gregorio Silva by keeping the barrier and red mist in place for eternity (or until all revenants die out). And then strangely enough, I found the bad ending to be the most appropriate one. Not being able to save a single successor of "Queen's" body parts, the player must absorb and contain the parts themselves until they can no longer control it at the end in which Louis does what he needs to and subdues the player. The player is dead, the successors are dead, (and I'm not sure on this) Louis takes on the role of Gregorio Silva and keeps the red mist and barrier in place, and everyone left behind continues a life of loss. As depressing and awful of an ending it can be, I felt as if it reflected the theme and tone of an unforgiving world shown at the beginning of the game. With the true ending, it felt like your typical Japanese game where the power of friendship saves the day. Io, the mysterious girl that watches over the player throughout the game, sacrifices herself to keep the barrier and red mist in place, produce blood beads, and protect the revenants. Everyone who was transformed as a successor was given back their human form and everyone was happy together. Then the player walks out to the outer edges of the barrier and is able to walk out of it. The main support characters joins in and says they'll stick by the player all the way as they walk into the sunset of the unknown world outside the barrier where the Aragami run rampant. And if you fulfill the special ending, you get a short clip of the player's character turning around and calling out for Io's name one last time. It is a good ending and leaves the player feeling hopeful for an uncertain future, but I also liked the bad ending too because of the impression it left me.
Overall, I loved the story and the game despite the some of its short-comings. It might have even been my favorite game of the year, but there's been so many great games I played this year I'm not sure. Code Vein was definitely a lot more than what I was expecting, and I'm so glad I enjoyed it as much as I did.
Code Vein [PC]
I spent the first half of October playing Code Vein. Starting up the game and hearing this song during tutorial immediately set the tone of the game and I instantly fell in love with the song. It's a sort of haunting melancholy that's both beautiful and sad at the same time. Code Vein is an Action-RPG that is heavily inspired by the Souls-like games with an emphasis on difficulty and character growth; however, it has a strong narrative that reveals itself little by little rather than making it sparse and ambiguous like the Souls games do. I went into the game hoping for a familiar yet unique experience to the Souls-like formula. I got what I wanted and possibly more.
Let's start off with the easiest thing for me to talk about: the graphics. Those familiar to games published by Bandai Namco won't be surprised by the strong anime style as its art style. Despite the post-apocalyptic setting, the color choices and art style really stands out and has distinguishing themes to each area, character, and enemy. An interesting design choice for portraying memories is rather than recreating a scene, the player walks through a series of floating environment with statues resembling the characters are shown with the scene played back through means of audio. Whether it was an artistic choice or a practical one to avoid the need to create dozens of cutscenes, I found it to be an effective and intimate story telling experience.
I'd like to talk about music next. I knew right when I heard the Title Screen music and the Tutorial Theme that the music was going to be great. Upon hearing the tutorial theme and knowing that the same studio that developed God Eater created Code Vein, I was pretty sure the music was composed by Go Shiina. He has a knack for creating music that is emotionally evocative, unique, and sounding bigger than life. I'd like talk about the "Tutorial Theme" in particular as it plays a HUGE role throughout the entire game. It has been given the name of "Memory of the Lost" by fans as it only plays whenever the player dives into the Memory of an individual who has become a "Lost". The song has many variations played throughout the game: One played by a cello, one played by a violin, one with vocals (the one linked above), one that's only piano, one that's played in a major key and sounds happier with a cello, and possibly a few other versions. It has a strong link to "memories" and each time you dive into one, the music brings the player into that mindset that they're revisiting a scene from someone's past. I don't think the memory diving scenes would be nearly as effective without the music. Another thing I really want to talk about is how the music evolves and is reactive to situations in both story and combat. When walking through a memory, the song could start off with the cello version and set a somber tone. As the player walks further into the memory and the dialogue becomes more intense, it might change to the violin version. And then it could switch to the vocal version near the end if it reveals something important. All this is done by smoothly transitioning between the different versions of the same song through a simple fade-in, fade-out process. Combat is the same where no music is played while exploring, a simple beat is played when fighting, and the music transitions and becomes more intense as more enemies approach the player. Music is really taken into consideration for design and is a pivotal component to the overall experience for Code Vein. It enhances the story telling, gets the player excited, and gives audio cues to things that happen around the player. Despite all my praise for the music, I have to admit that the soundtrack doesn't have a ton of memorable tunes asides from a few individual pieces. It's just that the music is so powerful and synonymous to the overall experience that I can't help but praise it.
Now for the most important topic: gameplay. If you've played a Dark Souls game or similar to it, you'll know what to expect. Your attacks and actions are a bit slower and deliberate from your usual action game, enemies hit hard, bosses are challenging, and there is a lot of playstyles to choose from. I got into the game not knowing much about the gameplay other than that it's like a Souls game. What I wanted was a unique take on the Souls-like formula and what gave that unique experience is the class system. Contrary to your typical RPG, the class system isn't the player chooses and sticks with for the rest of the game. Classes are acquired throughout the game from NPCs or from vestiges left from the "Lost". I found this design choice to be a good way to bring characters into the narrative. With each class that the player gains, the strength and memories of each individual becomes are part of them as each class labels the name of the character they're acquired from. It's such a profound method of emphasizing the significance of each individual the player meets throughout their journey. With each class comes a set array of skills, skills that can be mastered through proficient use. By mastering a skill, they can be used on different classes as long as they meet the required stats with the exception of a few skills that's exclusive to a class. Character levels are fixed and so there's no dumping attribute points into certain stats for specific classes or playstyles. Rather, everything is determined by what the player equips (Weapons, armor, class, and passive and active skills). Because the player can freely switch between all equips, there is no such thing as locking into a playstyle for an individual character. The player can switch to whatever class or playstyle they wish as many times as they want which is part of what keeps the game fresh throughout the entire playthrough. One unique mechanic that isn't found in Souls-like games (but is found in Hunter-like games) is the ability to bring a computer-AI partner along. The game throws a lot of enemies at the player, and so having a partner can help split the aggro, provide back-up, and alleviate the difficulty of the game. It is possible to play the game without a partner, but I hear it's way harder and feels clear the game was balanced around having a partner. Partners are NPCs that you meet along the way that are important to the story. They're actually really smart. They do a lot of damage, some make excellent front-liners, they save you from death when you get a lethal injury, they point out points of interests like enemies and pathways, and they will try their best to protect you. This also adds to the narrative as their banter and support gives depth to each character and how the player perceives them. Bosses are diverse and dynamic with some of them having a strong resemblance to bosses from Dark Souls. Most of them aren't particularly difficult with a partner and definitely easier with a friend joined in as well. However, I hear they can be even harder than Dark Souls bosses if played solo or on New Game+. There is one thing in particular that the game doesn't do very well: Multiplayer. It's structured a lot like Dark Souls where a player can be summoned and one good thing about Code Vein is that you can set a password so that you specifically summon your friend. The problem is that once a player is summoned, neither player can use the mistles (checkpoints) to replenish curatives. The summoned player must be at or beyond the summoner's progress in the story and can't be summoned into a game that's past their progression in the story (which makes sense). When a boss is defeated, the summoned player is kicked back into their own game and doesn't get to watch the cinematics (if there are any) afterwards. And only the host keeps the progress while the summoned player only gets to keep their Haze (Souls / currency for leveling). Because of this, friends can't experience the game together in a streamlined manner where instead of playing a "co-op" game, it's more like "dropping in to help out". I can go on and on about gameplay such as level design being uninspired, but I mostly enjoyed the gameplay with a few gripes here and there.
[HERE COMES THE SPOILERS] And finally, there's the story. I was honestly not expecting such a strong narrative out of a Souls-like game. Much like God Eater, the world is in ruins and people live in fear. In the world of Code Vein, the earth is invaded by these creatures called "horrors" and humanity was looking for a way to fight back. While creating a biological weapon being tested on a girl, the experiment goes wrong and the girl becomes this unstoppable being that destroyed everything in its path. With this newfound threat, humanity developed a parasite that would allow compatible humans to become immortal so that they could take on the transformed girl dubbed the "Queen". With the elimination of the "Queen", the undying humans now known as revenants faced a new problem. Revenants could no longer die, go hungry, or face any normal human problems; however, they have a thirst for blood and would turn into a monster called the "Lost" should they succumb to the thirst and frenzy. With a barrier enclosed around the city, a red mist that causes frenzy, and trees that provide "blood beads" becoming scarce for revenants to survive on, the world becomes more bleak by the day. With the stage set, the player wakes up with no memory of the past and thrust into the dying world of Code Vein.
The game starts off with a mysterious girl leading the player to a tree of blood beads to feed on with a few rowdy bunch capturing them and later forcing the player to look for more blood beads. Capture and forced to scout for more blood beads with the player is a man named Oliver. Oliver is kind and mild mattered while being able to convincingly fight off the monsters you encounter along the way. But due to a small bit of carelessness, Oliver is attacked and has his breathing mask damaged. I was under the impression that Oliver was going to stay with you throughout the entire game. It is to my surprise that you meet another individual along the way out of the cavernous depths and end up having to fight Oliver at the end. With Oliver turning into a "Lost" and defeating him, a bright red crystal is left behind. Upon Louis', the other man you meet, advice, I try to walk away from it. But as game design dictates, I picked up the glowing shard as it impales my hand and thrusts us into the memory of Oliver. We see that Oliver did not live an easy life as a revenant and that he did things he regret. In the end, all he wanted was to do what was right and survive. It was sad and heartbreaking to see everything that transpired up to the point of his end, and that's what really set my expectation for the rest of the game. I love the concept of vestiges both as a narrative and as a game design. The memories of an individual shed a little more of the story, creates a much more intimate connection of the character to the player, and creates a significance to the power the player gains. Throughout the game, the story isn't clear and throws a lot of information that doesn't quite make sense at first. I generally dislike a story being so ambiguous and told piece by piece in a backwards manner, and yet I found myself entirely engrossed to the world and its people in Code Vein. There's so much build up and it keep making itself more clear with each passing memory that you visit until you get near the end and finally realize what this entire game is about: the prelude to God Eater. The "horrors" that humans couldn't fight back were the Aragami all along! That one moment blew my mind and made everything so clear to me. I even made a joke early in the game asking my friend if "Code Vein takes in the same world as God Eater because there's a bugarally doll". So I was especially shocked to find out it really was in the same world. I do think the writing often suffers from the tropes found in a lot of Japanese animé and videogames, but the overall story and the way it was told was good enough that I forgive it. I'm split on how I feel about the differing endings though. I didn't know how the endings worked on my first playthrough and was locked out of the true ending before I found out. So I got the neutral ending, then the bad ending before I played a third time to get the true ending. The neutral ending felt like it could be a sad "true" ending for the game where the player takes the responsibility left behind by Gregorio Silva by keeping the barrier and red mist in place for eternity (or until all revenants die out). And then strangely enough, I found the bad ending to be the most appropriate one. Not being able to save a single successor of "Queen's" body parts, the player must absorb and contain the parts themselves until they can no longer control it at the end in which Louis does what he needs to and subdues the player. The player is dead, the successors are dead, (and I'm not sure on this) Louis takes on the role of Gregorio Silva and keeps the red mist and barrier in place, and everyone left behind continues a life of loss. As depressing and awful of an ending it can be, I felt as if it reflected the theme and tone of an unforgiving world shown at the beginning of the game. With the true ending, it felt like your typical Japanese game where the power of friendship saves the day. Io, the mysterious girl that watches over the player throughout the game, sacrifices herself to keep the barrier and red mist in place, produce blood beads, and protect the revenants. Everyone who was transformed as a successor was given back their human form and everyone was happy together. Then the player walks out to the outer edges of the barrier and is able to walk out of it. The main support characters joins in and says they'll stick by the player all the way as they walk into the sunset of the unknown world outside the barrier where the Aragami run rampant. And if you fulfill the special ending, you get a short clip of the player's character turning around and calling out for Io's name one last time. It is a good ending and leaves the player feeling hopeful for an uncertain future, but I also liked the bad ending too because of the impression it left me.
Overall, I loved the story and the game despite the some of its short-comings. It might have even been my favorite game of the year, but there's been so many great games I played this year I'm not sure. Code Vein was definitely a lot more than what I was expecting, and I'm so glad I enjoyed it as much as I did.
Monday, September 30, 2019
Reflecting as Autumn arrives
I've been incredibly busy the past two months right after EVO finished and have barely given myself a chance to really rest a little. While it's great that I've been so productive, it's very easy to keep rushing forward and lose sight of where I'm headed. With getting one audio project done after another and switching from one new game to the next, both work and play has kept me busy.
What eventually broke this chain and gave me a bit more to think about was an offer a friend gave me. The same friend that I helped with a project back in July was now able to officially hire me for contract work and asked me a few weeks ago about doing it. I thought about it for a while and ended up initially turning down the offer and decided to focus on music since I was incredibly motivated and inspired the past few weeks. He eventually contacted me again last week and really tried to convince me to take the job. In my mind, I felt it was unnecessary for my participation. But he was adamant on specifically having me do it. I was rather surprised by his enthusiasm and started to consider if I could put aside time for it. I asked for more details with the duration of the job in particular and it's about 4 weeks. After spending nearly an hour trying to persuade me, I eventually sort out how I was going to approach taking this job, slowing down on my audio work, and then continuing what I was doing after those 4 weeks of work time in my head and agreed to take the job.
Honestly, I felt bad for making my friend work so hard to try to convince me to take the job when I've been complaining about not getting any job opportunities for so long. Having been so unfocused all year since returning from Japan, I didn't want to ignore the motivation and inspiration I've recently gained and so I've been fervently working on remixes and continue to do so until I start on that job. In any case, here are the remixes I've finished the past 2 months.
On the videogaming side, I've jumped from playing Fire Emblem Three Houses to having to switch to Astral Chain, then to Daemon X Machina, and now Code Vein. With no more pre-order games in mind (other than Mario & Sonic at the Olympics 2020 in November), I can kind of relax a little on time constraint and slowly take on those 4 games. With the amount of work and games I've been putting time into recently, I felt almost as blind as I was before I got so motivated. I think that's why it's important to me to take one day out of each month like this to write in my blog to be able to reflect and clear my mind a bit so I can stay on the path I want to head towards. You can say I've been pretty happy with the amount of progress I've been able to cover in both work and games the past two months, and yet I still feel empty at times. I want to be able to reach a point in my life again where the uncertainty of my future feels exciting rather than daunting. My trip to Japan proved that my life still has that potential.
As we get into the Autumn season, I push forward towards my short-term goals and hope that it helps my long-term goals.
What eventually broke this chain and gave me a bit more to think about was an offer a friend gave me. The same friend that I helped with a project back in July was now able to officially hire me for contract work and asked me a few weeks ago about doing it. I thought about it for a while and ended up initially turning down the offer and decided to focus on music since I was incredibly motivated and inspired the past few weeks. He eventually contacted me again last week and really tried to convince me to take the job. In my mind, I felt it was unnecessary for my participation. But he was adamant on specifically having me do it. I was rather surprised by his enthusiasm and started to consider if I could put aside time for it. I asked for more details with the duration of the job in particular and it's about 4 weeks. After spending nearly an hour trying to persuade me, I eventually sort out how I was going to approach taking this job, slowing down on my audio work, and then continuing what I was doing after those 4 weeks of work time in my head and agreed to take the job.
Honestly, I felt bad for making my friend work so hard to try to convince me to take the job when I've been complaining about not getting any job opportunities for so long. Having been so unfocused all year since returning from Japan, I didn't want to ignore the motivation and inspiration I've recently gained and so I've been fervently working on remixes and continue to do so until I start on that job. In any case, here are the remixes I've finished the past 2 months.
On the videogaming side, I've jumped from playing Fire Emblem Three Houses to having to switch to Astral Chain, then to Daemon X Machina, and now Code Vein. With no more pre-order games in mind (other than Mario & Sonic at the Olympics 2020 in November), I can kind of relax a little on time constraint and slowly take on those 4 games. With the amount of work and games I've been putting time into recently, I felt almost as blind as I was before I got so motivated. I think that's why it's important to me to take one day out of each month like this to write in my blog to be able to reflect and clear my mind a bit so I can stay on the path I want to head towards. You can say I've been pretty happy with the amount of progress I've been able to cover in both work and games the past two months, and yet I still feel empty at times. I want to be able to reach a point in my life again where the uncertainty of my future feels exciting rather than daunting. My trip to Japan proved that my life still has that potential.
As we get into the Autumn season, I push forward towards my short-term goals and hope that it helps my long-term goals.
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Let's talk about EVO 2019 [VICTORY SPOILERS]
EVO was so much fun to watch this year. I remember when I first started watching EVO a bit more serious back in 2011, there were barely 3 streams, I only watched 4 different games, and I mainly only watched finals. Now there's a combined force of over 15 stream channels, I watched over 22 different games, and I pretty much dedicated the time from Friday till closing on Sunday watching the streams. With the rise of Esports and plethora of fighting games developed in the past decade, EVO has exploded into popularity. It's such a great time to be a Fighting game fan or to get into them right now. So let's talk about finals and game announcements!
Puyo Puyo Champions was an Animevo tournament. I played a decent amount of it when it released three months ago. I didn't even know if we were ever going to get it localized, but I'm super glad they brought it over. It's a bit barebones, but was sold at an incredibly cheap price. Ever since Puyo Puyo Tetris released on PC, I had tried taking both games a bit more seriously and try to learn the game and yet I always ended up practicing Tetris a lot more. With Puyo Puyo Champions out, I tried to put more focus onto it. I've come to have an even greater respect for those who have practiced to get to this level of skill whenever I watch them play. I saw a lot of familiar names like S2, ShiroBrawl, DdR_Dan, and livedesu. livedesu is just way too good and is far and beyond everyone else's skill. He's fast, has creative chains that can trigger from the front or end effectively, and he knows when to harass (make a small chain to disrupt the opponents combo). It was fun to watch Puyo Puyo being played at this level.
SoulCalibur VI
I was excited to see an American get to Grand Finals and he was playing Azwel, a character I find to be unique and fun to play. Bluegod, the American player, was able to reset the bracket but was overwhelmed by his opponent Yuttoto of Japan. Voldo is a fairly quick and weird character to react to since a lot of his attacks come from odd directions and is a bit more difficult to predict. It was a good Top 8 to watch. I was sad when it ended and they didn't have anything to share or announce. Apparently, they withheld their announcement until Sunday where all the major Grand Finals took place.
BlazBlue Centralfiction
It was nice to see BlazBlue Centralfiction still at EVO. I wasn't too surprised to see Fenritti at Grand Finals considering how consistent he's always been every year, but I was surprised to see how dominant his opponent was against him with a 3-0 victory. Es is such a strong character.
Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st]
Having to wake up by 10AM on Saturday to catch UNIST Top 8, I was already feeling sleepy as the day began. UNIST was the game my friends and I were looking forward to watching the most (other than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for me) as it's been the game we've been playing together the most recently. All of Top 8 was a lot of fun to watch with a diversity of character choices, really high level play, and some wild display of combos from both players at Grand Finals. We watched a lot of pools as well leading up to Top 8 and each of us learned a bit more about competitive play and a bit about the characters we liked using. I felt like I learned a lot considering I'm the only one that doesn't practice the game and found a lot of new strategies and approaches I could be using for characters like Mika and Waldstein. UNIST was one of my favorite Top 8 finals to watch this EVO.
Kill la Kill: IF
Kill la Kill: IF released a week before EVO, and yet there was a decent amount of people participating in the tournament. Not knowing too much about the game, I watched the tournament more as a way to find out if it'd be a game I'd enjoy. In conclusion, I think I'd enjoy playing single-player and not multiplayer. Also, $60 is kind of a lot for 8 characters, a handful of stages, and a combat system that doesn't have as much depth as a traditional fighter. I'll definitely be picking the game up one day, but not till it's a lot cheaper.
Dragon Ball FighterZ
While watching Top 8 of Dragon Ball FighterZ last year, I had fallen asleep at one point since it was Sunday (3rd and last day of EVO), I was super tired, and I didn't realize how exhausting watching the game would be. Much like Marvel vs. Capcom 3, there is a lot of things going on during combat. Each player has three characters of which they can switch between or call in for an assist, a special meter that can go up to 7 levels, sparking which works like a burst and gives a limited time of heightened strength, projectiles, and the ability to teleport behind the opponent among other things. So there's a lot to pay attention to. Surprisingly, I didn't fall asleep throughout Top 8 this year considering how tired I was already feeling after watching UNIST. It was a good showing of new characters, new metas, new strategies, but the same rivalries. Last year, Go1 climbed up to grand finals and had reset the bracket against SonicFox who requested to switch seats and player sides with Go1 after the reset. SonicFox had turned the momentum around and won DBFZ's first EVO showing in 2018. This year, Go1 went into Grand Finals on winner's side with SonicFox climbing through loser's bracket and making it to Grand Finals. It wasn't looking too good at first with SonicFox winning the first two games. But Go1 was able to turn a close third game around and found the momentum to push forward and win two more close games to close out the match. It was an emotional victory for Go1 as he threw off his headphones and glasses and cried uncontrollably knowing that he's worked for an entire year to get to that point. What made the moment even greater was the incredible sportsmanship displayed by SonicFox as he congratulated and celebrated his opponent's victory alongside him.
Samurai Shodown
Samurai Shodown reboot had only released a month ago and yet a lot of players have already established a strong sense of what works and what doesn't. Much like its predecessors, Samurai Shodown is a footsie heavy fighting game that relies more on spacing and timing rather than catching your opponent with a long combo. I'm waiting for the PC version to release and so I haven't had the chance to play the game yet. I didn't watch much of pools, so I didn't get to see a lot of characters being played. Top 8 showed that there are obvious favorite characters in high level play. Still, there were a lot of high tensity moments and it was really exciting to watch. Infiltration was just so on point and dominant in Grand Finals.
Super Smash Bros. Melee
I just wanted to make a small mention since I did watch Grand Finals. It seems a lot of the familiar names in Melee wasn't in Top 8 and the Grand Finals were between ChuDat with Ice Climbers and Hungrybox as Jigglypuff. Unsurprisingly, Hungrybox won pretty decisively. I was happy to see ChuDat in Grand Finals, but sad to see him getting camped out. I did watch a bit of Nitro+ Blasterz, but barely remember anything since I was focusing on Samurai Shodown and Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Puyo Puyo Tetris Swap (and a bunch of other Animevo games)
Aw, no one uploaded a video of Puyo Puyo Tetris Swap. It was fun to watch, although live_desu was just too good and took 1st place in this game as well. From 5PM-8PM Saturday, I was watching Puyo Puyo Tetris Swap, Guilty Gear XX, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev2, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Million Arthur: Arcana Blood, Koihime Enbu RyoRaiRai, and Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code all at the same exact time. I didn't really pay enough attention to GGXX, so I don't remember much. On GGXrdRev2, I was cheering on Marlinpie who was able to reset the bracket in Grand Finals but started losing momentum and control of the fight by the 6th game. UMvC3 was interesting with a lot of unfamiliar team compositions, but I was too focused on the other games to really pay much attention to it. Million Arthur: Arcana Blood had just recently released in the West and I had bought the game right on that day right before the Grand Finals, so I sadly didn't understand what was going on. But watching the gameplay of MA:AB, I was excited to play it myself (and so far it's really fun). Puyo Puyo Tetris Swap, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev2 and Koihime Enbu RyoRaiRai were the games I was focusing on watching during that time. I've waited for a long time for Koihime Enbu RRR to get cheaper since it adds very little to the original game and I finally picked it up for $12.99. Top 8 was fun enough to watch. And finally Melty Blood, I just kind of watched it off and on with all the other streams.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
It was near the end of the day for Saturday and the last three finals I wanted to check out starting at 8PM were Mortal Kombat 11, King of Fighters XIV, and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. I've never been fond of watching MK. I like playing the games, but for some reason I just get so bored watching them. I figured I'd give MK11 a chance since it's the new one, but I still had the same feeling and got bored. The stream for King of Fighters XIV was being commentated in Spanish and the stream quality was a bit poor, so I lost interest in watching that as well. I settled with watching Persona 4 Arena Ultimax while playing some fighting games on the side. It was entertaining, but it also felt very long to get through the finals. And thus ended the streams for Saturday. With going to sleep so late that night and Top 8 starting at 9AM the next morning, I wasn't sure if I was able to keep up.
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle
BBTAG was a lot of fun to watch this year as players have all gotten better and adapted to new metas and new strategies. What's more, an American got into Grand Finals and won pretty soundly. And he won with Yang, a character often not considered to be part of the meta in high level play. There was a huge difference in skill level this year compared to last year as the game and its players have grown and evolved.
Street Fighter V
When Street Fighter was about to start, I was just so tired from the lack of sleep that I started feeling sick. Not knowing a majority of the players, I decided to take a nap and hoped that I'd feel good enough to survive the rest of the day. After sleeping for an hour, I woke up and watched the last few matches. I was happy to see a lot of my favorite characters in those last few matches (Rashid, Ibuki, and Karin). The Grand Finals was pretty exciting with a lot of back and forth momentum and mind games. There were tons of close calls with the last hit being the closest one of all. It was wild, fast-paced, and a lot of fun to watch.
Tekken 7
Tekken 7 was a lot of fun to watch this year with a tiny exception. Arslan Ash is a player from Pakistan who has made a name for himself in the Tekken community since his victory at EVO Japan earlier this year. I haven't gotten to see him play until Top 8 of this EVO. You could say that his style of play is really boring to watch; however, I can't help but praise him for how efficient his playstyle is. His style of play with Kazumi is very safe, systematic, and effective. There's very little wasted movement and it rarely puts him in a disadvantageous position to be easily punished. It is both aggressive and defensive at the same exact time. It made me wonder why none of the Korean players try that with Kazumi first (my only guess is that a lot of the best Korean players stick to what they know with familiar characters). Overall, it was a fun Top 8 to watch.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Not only did the finals break the record of highest viewership for Super Smash Bros., it also broke the record of highest viewership in EVO history with 279,000+ viewers. Each and every player had a different character they played from the others and made me happy to see such a variety of viable characters. There were a lot of crazy plays, but these 10 seconds from this video was my favorite:
And the most wild moment in the Grand Finals where Tweek had the game point lead of 2-1 and the stock advantage of 3-1. Down to his last stock, MkLeo was able to turn that game around and barely make it out of that 4th game before winning one more game to reset the bracket and winning 3 more games to win the Grand Finals. It was an insane comeback that I haven't seen the likes of since the days of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. SSBU was definitely one of the best, if not the best, Top 8 at EVO this year.
Okay, time for game announcements!
Granblue Fantasy Versus
The more I hear about this game, the more I want it! So it seems like there will be an RPG mode where it plays like a Beat-em-Up with loot, gear, levels, and online co-op with friends. A release date in February of 2020 for Japan was given, but no update on when we'll get a Western release or a release for PC.
Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r]
Unfortunately, UNI[cl-r] was leaked a few months ago by Taiwan and Australian ratings so the existence of the game was known. The character was also leaked. Still, I was happy to see it officially confirmed along with adding new moves to every character and showing what the new character is capable of.
Dragon Ball FighterZ
Joining the list of leaked information, Janemba was accidentally revealed on Nintendo's store page as a DLC character and was quickly taken down afterwards. So sadly, he was not a surprise. On the bright side, Season 2 pass for DBFZ was 50% off over the weekend and so I picked it up which includes Janemba. I actually don't know who he is, but I really liked what I saw in the trailer.
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle
This was the announcement I was most excited for and it certainly delivered! It was unfortunately leaked the morning it was going to be announced, but I'm glad I didn't know and watched it revealed live on EVO stream while I was watching with my friends. Prior going into EVO weekend, I had hoped for BBTAG to have another season of character packs to sell. As much as I hate DLCs, I want more characters, content and change to BBTAG. I LOVE the game. With version patch 1.5 out a couple months ago, there was leaked information on who might be joining BBTAG through the announcers audio files from a datamine. While I was expecting to see some characters from BlazBlue, Persona 4 Arena, and Under Night In-Birth, we instead got two new fates joining as well as a RWBY character. Since the launch of BBTAG, it's been known that the names "Asuka" and "Yumi" were found as announcer audio files in the datamine. Both those names are known to be main characters of Senran Kagura. Long have I waited for them to be announced for the game, and finally "Yumi" makes an appearance as its first Senran Kagura representative. For the 7th fate, it was heavily implied that they were going to start adding characters from Akatsuki Blitzkampf based on the datamine from version 1.5 of BBTAG. Having only played Akatsuki Blitzkampf once out of curiousity, I didn't know the characters well enough to say who'd I really want added. I obviously wanted Akatsuki as he's one of my favorite characters in Under Night In-Birth (as a guest character). But I joked with friends saying that I'd want Blitztank, a character brought up in joke quite often since I first learned about it back in 2012. To actually see him added as an official character in BBTAG was both amusing and delightful. But the biggest surprise of all was seeing Neo Politan as the RWBY character they were going to add. I expected Team JNPR, Qrow, Adam, Roman, and a number of other characters that might make it before Neo, and yet the one character I really wanted (other than Velvet, who wasn't part of the datamine leak) was the one they gave us. There will also be new mechanic changes, new UI (Oh please fix that awful character select screen), possibly new moves for characters, and 5 more unrevealed characters. All that I can hope more for is a single-player mode with replay value like they have had for all Arc System Works fighting games.
Street Fighter V
Among the biggest leaks of EVO was Street Fighter V. UNI[cl-r] was just a logo leak. DBFZ was just a name leak. But Street Fighter V was the entire video leaked out on Steam Store page for Street Fighter V. They tried to take it down as quickly as possible, but it was already too late. The video was downloaded and uploaded all over the net and spread like wild fire. It was rather unfortunate and Ono went up on stage to deliver an apology to all the fans for having the surprise ruined. But in all honesty, it would've been kind of a weak announcement. It's cool we're getting E. Honda again, and Poison actually works differently from Street Fighter IV. Lucia was the most exciting announcement out of the three being the new character and all. But while every single game seemed to be getting revamped gameplay changes to all characters and systems (UNI, BBTAG, SC6, and T7), Street Fighter V had nothing new to offer other than these three characters. At the very least, all three of them were available the day after the official announcement.
Tekken 7
What I wanted out of Tekken 7 was another season of characters and for Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy VII to be the guest character. Due to a ill-timed joke in the middle of Tekken 7's finals, everyone watching was led to believe that Solid Snake of the Metal Gear franchise was joining Tekken 7. This was cleared up the day after when EVO twitter explained that the short video of Snake was something cool they wanted to make and show during the tournament. This obviously enraged the community for misleading them. But this means Tifa still has a chance to be the guest character! The guest/feature character was not shown at EVO this time (I'm still weirded out by the inclusion of Negan from The Walking Dead in Tekken 7), but two out of 5 of the DLC characters were shown: Zafina, a returning character to the series and Leroy Smith, a new original character. I'm okay on Zafina (not too exciting for me), but Leroy looks like a fun character.
SoulCalibur VI
So both SoulCalibur VI and Samurai Shodown didn't show anything at the end of their own Finals, but withheld it until Sunday where all attention would be at one place (a smart move). SoulCalibur VI revealed its last DLC character from the first season as Cassandra. I tried her out last night and she's way different than I remember her and am really happy about her new moveset. I just hoped for a 2nd Season of characters for SoulCalibur VI and was thinking that Sekiro would be a cool guest character for the game. Seeing how I got everything I wanted in BBTAG, I was wondering if I'd get Sekiro in SoulCalibur VI. Season 2 will include new moves for characters, changes to mechanics, and new content. Season 2 pass will include 4 DLC characters with new character creation items with one of the DLC characters being a guest character. At the end of the trailer, I saw a flower petal fall and the chime of bells which made me think it really was Sekiro. "OMG, I CAN'T BELIEVE WE'RE GETTING SEKI- oh it's Haohmaru-". Haohmaru was a character that made almost too much sense and is a little crazy to think about. Samurai Shodown was one of the first weapon-based fighters that really popularized the concept while SoulCalibur had ascended to become the most popular weapon fighter in the market. So it was really cool to see it come full circle and have both series collaborate.
Samurai Shodown & King of Fighters XV
Honestly, all I wanted out of Samurai Shodown was a release date for PC. They revealed the release dates of all the DLC characters for Season 1 and a free DLC character in September. Then they revealed that a Season 2 character pack will release in 2020 with returning characters of the series based on a popularity poll (I hope Iroha gets in!). I'm just looking forward to the PC release so I can play it. Also, I'm super happy Rimururu is in the game.
Guilty Gear
Daisuke Ishiwatari didn't show up to last year's EVO and we were told he was working on something Guilty Gear related. Well here it is and it looks incredible!
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
And of course we got nothing out of Nintendo.
EVO was so much fun to watch this year. I feel like fighting games are just getting better and better now. It's such a great time to be a fighting game fan~
Puyo Puyo Champions
Puyo Puyo Champions was an Animevo tournament. I played a decent amount of it when it released three months ago. I didn't even know if we were ever going to get it localized, but I'm super glad they brought it over. It's a bit barebones, but was sold at an incredibly cheap price. Ever since Puyo Puyo Tetris released on PC, I had tried taking both games a bit more seriously and try to learn the game and yet I always ended up practicing Tetris a lot more. With Puyo Puyo Champions out, I tried to put more focus onto it. I've come to have an even greater respect for those who have practiced to get to this level of skill whenever I watch them play. I saw a lot of familiar names like S2, ShiroBrawl, DdR_Dan, and livedesu. livedesu is just way too good and is far and beyond everyone else's skill. He's fast, has creative chains that can trigger from the front or end effectively, and he knows when to harass (make a small chain to disrupt the opponents combo). It was fun to watch Puyo Puyo being played at this level.
SoulCalibur VI
I was excited to see an American get to Grand Finals and he was playing Azwel, a character I find to be unique and fun to play. Bluegod, the American player, was able to reset the bracket but was overwhelmed by his opponent Yuttoto of Japan. Voldo is a fairly quick and weird character to react to since a lot of his attacks come from odd directions and is a bit more difficult to predict. It was a good Top 8 to watch. I was sad when it ended and they didn't have anything to share or announce. Apparently, they withheld their announcement until Sunday where all the major Grand Finals took place.
BlazBlue Centralfiction
It was nice to see BlazBlue Centralfiction still at EVO. I wasn't too surprised to see Fenritti at Grand Finals considering how consistent he's always been every year, but I was surprised to see how dominant his opponent was against him with a 3-0 victory. Es is such a strong character.
Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st]
Having to wake up by 10AM on Saturday to catch UNIST Top 8, I was already feeling sleepy as the day began. UNIST was the game my friends and I were looking forward to watching the most (other than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for me) as it's been the game we've been playing together the most recently. All of Top 8 was a lot of fun to watch with a diversity of character choices, really high level play, and some wild display of combos from both players at Grand Finals. We watched a lot of pools as well leading up to Top 8 and each of us learned a bit more about competitive play and a bit about the characters we liked using. I felt like I learned a lot considering I'm the only one that doesn't practice the game and found a lot of new strategies and approaches I could be using for characters like Mika and Waldstein. UNIST was one of my favorite Top 8 finals to watch this EVO.
Kill la Kill: IF
Kill la Kill: IF released a week before EVO, and yet there was a decent amount of people participating in the tournament. Not knowing too much about the game, I watched the tournament more as a way to find out if it'd be a game I'd enjoy. In conclusion, I think I'd enjoy playing single-player and not multiplayer. Also, $60 is kind of a lot for 8 characters, a handful of stages, and a combat system that doesn't have as much depth as a traditional fighter. I'll definitely be picking the game up one day, but not till it's a lot cheaper.
Dragon Ball FighterZ
While watching Top 8 of Dragon Ball FighterZ last year, I had fallen asleep at one point since it was Sunday (3rd and last day of EVO), I was super tired, and I didn't realize how exhausting watching the game would be. Much like Marvel vs. Capcom 3, there is a lot of things going on during combat. Each player has three characters of which they can switch between or call in for an assist, a special meter that can go up to 7 levels, sparking which works like a burst and gives a limited time of heightened strength, projectiles, and the ability to teleport behind the opponent among other things. So there's a lot to pay attention to. Surprisingly, I didn't fall asleep throughout Top 8 this year considering how tired I was already feeling after watching UNIST. It was a good showing of new characters, new metas, new strategies, but the same rivalries. Last year, Go1 climbed up to grand finals and had reset the bracket against SonicFox who requested to switch seats and player sides with Go1 after the reset. SonicFox had turned the momentum around and won DBFZ's first EVO showing in 2018. This year, Go1 went into Grand Finals on winner's side with SonicFox climbing through loser's bracket and making it to Grand Finals. It wasn't looking too good at first with SonicFox winning the first two games. But Go1 was able to turn a close third game around and found the momentum to push forward and win two more close games to close out the match. It was an emotional victory for Go1 as he threw off his headphones and glasses and cried uncontrollably knowing that he's worked for an entire year to get to that point. What made the moment even greater was the incredible sportsmanship displayed by SonicFox as he congratulated and celebrated his opponent's victory alongside him.
Samurai Shodown
Samurai Shodown reboot had only released a month ago and yet a lot of players have already established a strong sense of what works and what doesn't. Much like its predecessors, Samurai Shodown is a footsie heavy fighting game that relies more on spacing and timing rather than catching your opponent with a long combo. I'm waiting for the PC version to release and so I haven't had the chance to play the game yet. I didn't watch much of pools, so I didn't get to see a lot of characters being played. Top 8 showed that there are obvious favorite characters in high level play. Still, there were a lot of high tensity moments and it was really exciting to watch. Infiltration was just so on point and dominant in Grand Finals.
Super Smash Bros. Melee
I just wanted to make a small mention since I did watch Grand Finals. It seems a lot of the familiar names in Melee wasn't in Top 8 and the Grand Finals were between ChuDat with Ice Climbers and Hungrybox as Jigglypuff. Unsurprisingly, Hungrybox won pretty decisively. I was happy to see ChuDat in Grand Finals, but sad to see him getting camped out. I did watch a bit of Nitro+ Blasterz, but barely remember anything since I was focusing on Samurai Shodown and Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Puyo Puyo Tetris Swap (and a bunch of other Animevo games)
Aw, no one uploaded a video of Puyo Puyo Tetris Swap. It was fun to watch, although live_desu was just too good and took 1st place in this game as well. From 5PM-8PM Saturday, I was watching Puyo Puyo Tetris Swap, Guilty Gear XX, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev2, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Million Arthur: Arcana Blood, Koihime Enbu RyoRaiRai, and Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code all at the same exact time. I didn't really pay enough attention to GGXX, so I don't remember much. On GGXrdRev2, I was cheering on Marlinpie who was able to reset the bracket in Grand Finals but started losing momentum and control of the fight by the 6th game. UMvC3 was interesting with a lot of unfamiliar team compositions, but I was too focused on the other games to really pay much attention to it. Million Arthur: Arcana Blood had just recently released in the West and I had bought the game right on that day right before the Grand Finals, so I sadly didn't understand what was going on. But watching the gameplay of MA:AB, I was excited to play it myself (and so far it's really fun). Puyo Puyo Tetris Swap, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev2 and Koihime Enbu RyoRaiRai were the games I was focusing on watching during that time. I've waited for a long time for Koihime Enbu RRR to get cheaper since it adds very little to the original game and I finally picked it up for $12.99. Top 8 was fun enough to watch. And finally Melty Blood, I just kind of watched it off and on with all the other streams.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
It was near the end of the day for Saturday and the last three finals I wanted to check out starting at 8PM were Mortal Kombat 11, King of Fighters XIV, and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. I've never been fond of watching MK. I like playing the games, but for some reason I just get so bored watching them. I figured I'd give MK11 a chance since it's the new one, but I still had the same feeling and got bored. The stream for King of Fighters XIV was being commentated in Spanish and the stream quality was a bit poor, so I lost interest in watching that as well. I settled with watching Persona 4 Arena Ultimax while playing some fighting games on the side. It was entertaining, but it also felt very long to get through the finals. And thus ended the streams for Saturday. With going to sleep so late that night and Top 8 starting at 9AM the next morning, I wasn't sure if I was able to keep up.
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle
BBTAG was a lot of fun to watch this year as players have all gotten better and adapted to new metas and new strategies. What's more, an American got into Grand Finals and won pretty soundly. And he won with Yang, a character often not considered to be part of the meta in high level play. There was a huge difference in skill level this year compared to last year as the game and its players have grown and evolved.
Street Fighter V
When Street Fighter was about to start, I was just so tired from the lack of sleep that I started feeling sick. Not knowing a majority of the players, I decided to take a nap and hoped that I'd feel good enough to survive the rest of the day. After sleeping for an hour, I woke up and watched the last few matches. I was happy to see a lot of my favorite characters in those last few matches (Rashid, Ibuki, and Karin). The Grand Finals was pretty exciting with a lot of back and forth momentum and mind games. There were tons of close calls with the last hit being the closest one of all. It was wild, fast-paced, and a lot of fun to watch.
Tekken 7
Tekken 7 was a lot of fun to watch this year with a tiny exception. Arslan Ash is a player from Pakistan who has made a name for himself in the Tekken community since his victory at EVO Japan earlier this year. I haven't gotten to see him play until Top 8 of this EVO. You could say that his style of play is really boring to watch; however, I can't help but praise him for how efficient his playstyle is. His style of play with Kazumi is very safe, systematic, and effective. There's very little wasted movement and it rarely puts him in a disadvantageous position to be easily punished. It is both aggressive and defensive at the same exact time. It made me wonder why none of the Korean players try that with Kazumi first (my only guess is that a lot of the best Korean players stick to what they know with familiar characters). Overall, it was a fun Top 8 to watch.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Not only did the finals break the record of highest viewership for Super Smash Bros., it also broke the record of highest viewership in EVO history with 279,000+ viewers. Each and every player had a different character they played from the others and made me happy to see such a variety of viable characters. There were a lot of crazy plays, but these 10 seconds from this video was my favorite:
And the most wild moment in the Grand Finals where Tweek had the game point lead of 2-1 and the stock advantage of 3-1. Down to his last stock, MkLeo was able to turn that game around and barely make it out of that 4th game before winning one more game to reset the bracket and winning 3 more games to win the Grand Finals. It was an insane comeback that I haven't seen the likes of since the days of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. SSBU was definitely one of the best, if not the best, Top 8 at EVO this year.
Okay, time for game announcements!
Granblue Fantasy Versus
The more I hear about this game, the more I want it! So it seems like there will be an RPG mode where it plays like a Beat-em-Up with loot, gear, levels, and online co-op with friends. A release date in February of 2020 for Japan was given, but no update on when we'll get a Western release or a release for PC.
Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r]
Unfortunately, UNI[cl-r] was leaked a few months ago by Taiwan and Australian ratings so the existence of the game was known. The character was also leaked. Still, I was happy to see it officially confirmed along with adding new moves to every character and showing what the new character is capable of.
Dragon Ball FighterZ
Joining the list of leaked information, Janemba was accidentally revealed on Nintendo's store page as a DLC character and was quickly taken down afterwards. So sadly, he was not a surprise. On the bright side, Season 2 pass for DBFZ was 50% off over the weekend and so I picked it up which includes Janemba. I actually don't know who he is, but I really liked what I saw in the trailer.
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle
This was the announcement I was most excited for and it certainly delivered! It was unfortunately leaked the morning it was going to be announced, but I'm glad I didn't know and watched it revealed live on EVO stream while I was watching with my friends. Prior going into EVO weekend, I had hoped for BBTAG to have another season of character packs to sell. As much as I hate DLCs, I want more characters, content and change to BBTAG. I LOVE the game. With version patch 1.5 out a couple months ago, there was leaked information on who might be joining BBTAG through the announcers audio files from a datamine. While I was expecting to see some characters from BlazBlue, Persona 4 Arena, and Under Night In-Birth, we instead got two new fates joining as well as a RWBY character. Since the launch of BBTAG, it's been known that the names "Asuka" and "Yumi" were found as announcer audio files in the datamine. Both those names are known to be main characters of Senran Kagura. Long have I waited for them to be announced for the game, and finally "Yumi" makes an appearance as its first Senran Kagura representative. For the 7th fate, it was heavily implied that they were going to start adding characters from Akatsuki Blitzkampf based on the datamine from version 1.5 of BBTAG. Having only played Akatsuki Blitzkampf once out of curiousity, I didn't know the characters well enough to say who'd I really want added. I obviously wanted Akatsuki as he's one of my favorite characters in Under Night In-Birth (as a guest character). But I joked with friends saying that I'd want Blitztank, a character brought up in joke quite often since I first learned about it back in 2012. To actually see him added as an official character in BBTAG was both amusing and delightful. But the biggest surprise of all was seeing Neo Politan as the RWBY character they were going to add. I expected Team JNPR, Qrow, Adam, Roman, and a number of other characters that might make it before Neo, and yet the one character I really wanted (other than Velvet, who wasn't part of the datamine leak) was the one they gave us. There will also be new mechanic changes, new UI (Oh please fix that awful character select screen), possibly new moves for characters, and 5 more unrevealed characters. All that I can hope more for is a single-player mode with replay value like they have had for all Arc System Works fighting games.
Street Fighter V
Among the biggest leaks of EVO was Street Fighter V. UNI[cl-r] was just a logo leak. DBFZ was just a name leak. But Street Fighter V was the entire video leaked out on Steam Store page for Street Fighter V. They tried to take it down as quickly as possible, but it was already too late. The video was downloaded and uploaded all over the net and spread like wild fire. It was rather unfortunate and Ono went up on stage to deliver an apology to all the fans for having the surprise ruined. But in all honesty, it would've been kind of a weak announcement. It's cool we're getting E. Honda again, and Poison actually works differently from Street Fighter IV. Lucia was the most exciting announcement out of the three being the new character and all. But while every single game seemed to be getting revamped gameplay changes to all characters and systems (UNI, BBTAG, SC6, and T7), Street Fighter V had nothing new to offer other than these three characters. At the very least, all three of them were available the day after the official announcement.
Tekken 7
What I wanted out of Tekken 7 was another season of characters and for Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy VII to be the guest character. Due to a ill-timed joke in the middle of Tekken 7's finals, everyone watching was led to believe that Solid Snake of the Metal Gear franchise was joining Tekken 7. This was cleared up the day after when EVO twitter explained that the short video of Snake was something cool they wanted to make and show during the tournament. This obviously enraged the community for misleading them. But this means Tifa still has a chance to be the guest character! The guest/feature character was not shown at EVO this time (I'm still weirded out by the inclusion of Negan from The Walking Dead in Tekken 7), but two out of 5 of the DLC characters were shown: Zafina, a returning character to the series and Leroy Smith, a new original character. I'm okay on Zafina (not too exciting for me), but Leroy looks like a fun character.
SoulCalibur VI
So both SoulCalibur VI and Samurai Shodown didn't show anything at the end of their own Finals, but withheld it until Sunday where all attention would be at one place (a smart move). SoulCalibur VI revealed its last DLC character from the first season as Cassandra. I tried her out last night and she's way different than I remember her and am really happy about her new moveset. I just hoped for a 2nd Season of characters for SoulCalibur VI and was thinking that Sekiro would be a cool guest character for the game. Seeing how I got everything I wanted in BBTAG, I was wondering if I'd get Sekiro in SoulCalibur VI. Season 2 will include new moves for characters, changes to mechanics, and new content. Season 2 pass will include 4 DLC characters with new character creation items with one of the DLC characters being a guest character. At the end of the trailer, I saw a flower petal fall and the chime of bells which made me think it really was Sekiro. "OMG, I CAN'T BELIEVE WE'RE GETTING SEKI- oh it's Haohmaru-". Haohmaru was a character that made almost too much sense and is a little crazy to think about. Samurai Shodown was one of the first weapon-based fighters that really popularized the concept while SoulCalibur had ascended to become the most popular weapon fighter in the market. So it was really cool to see it come full circle and have both series collaborate.
Samurai Shodown & King of Fighters XV
Honestly, all I wanted out of Samurai Shodown was a release date for PC. They revealed the release dates of all the DLC characters for Season 1 and a free DLC character in September. Then they revealed that a Season 2 character pack will release in 2020 with returning characters of the series based on a popularity poll (I hope Iroha gets in!). I'm just looking forward to the PC release so I can play it. Also, I'm super happy Rimururu is in the game.
Guilty Gear
Daisuke Ishiwatari didn't show up to last year's EVO and we were told he was working on something Guilty Gear related. Well here it is and it looks incredible!
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
And of course we got nothing out of Nintendo.
EVO was so much fun to watch this year. I feel like fighting games are just getting better and better now. It's such a great time to be a fighting game fan~
Friday, July 19, 2019
Summer so far
This past month and a half have been kind of rough. I got sick in the beginning of June with my allergies acting up at the same time which lead to a cough that lasted for weeks. Shortly after E3, there was news on the disappearance of Desmond "Etika" Amofah and a few days later it was reported that he had taken his own life. Earlier in the week, I was told that a relative of ours from China was in town and will be joining us for dinner. I was excited as I haven't seen them in 13 years. But immediately after, I was also told that their mother had passed away the night before. It was shocking and devastating to hear such news. So as happy as I was to see them, I didn't know what to say and felt feel sorrow for their loss. Yesterday, news broke out that a man had gone to the Kyoto Animation Studio building, poured flammable fluid all over the building and lit it on fire. From the last update, 33 people had died and 29 more were sent to the hospital including the suspect. It was sad enough to hear such an event occurred in Japan (Japan is supposed to be really safe!), but the amount of lives it claimed and affected is unnerving. Whatever drove that man to do such a thing can't be justified. Those affected didn't deserve this.
Originally, I wanted to make a post talking about Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and SolSeraph, but I feel like this isn't particularly the time to do so. I've been so busy that I haven't really had time to do things like make posts about the games I've played. I had agreed to help a friend out on a project he was working on and I've dedicated these past 2.5 weeks towards that work. I can't really talk about it much, but I can say that I went through a list of 300 mobile games to test and analyze. Whenever I did have time, I've been playing through the new games I got during Steam Summer Sale.
So for the past three days, I've been just sorting out my thoughts and figuring out what to do from here. In terms of entertainment, Fire Emblem Three Houses releases next Friday, EVO 2019 is a week after that, Astral Chain releases at the end of August, Daemon X Machina comes out two weeks after that, and Code Vein comes out at the end of September. So my plate is pretty full in terms of Videogames the next three months or so. In terms of productivity, I think I want to start going to the gym again this upcoming Monday. I know I've been ignoring my health again with going to sleep late and not exercising. I'm going to try to finish up the remix I was working on before the end of the month. Then I need to figure out what I want to do next because there's just too much I want to do right now. I want to be able to revisit my previous work and remaster them, work on new remixes, work on original work for my portfolio, learn and create animations that I've had ideas for years now, record my past piano arrangements, etc. I feel my mind wandering and feeling unfocused ever since I got back from Japan earlier this year. It still feels like a dream, having gone to Japan and experience what it had to offer there. I have been able to focus enough to work on improving mastering, but I feel like I'm not getting enough work done this year. But the fact that I'm still motivated to learn, improve, and produce work is enough to get me on the right path. I don't know my exact plans yet for the rest of the year, but I'd like to finish that remix first more than anything.
Originally, I wanted to make a post talking about Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and SolSeraph, but I feel like this isn't particularly the time to do so. I've been so busy that I haven't really had time to do things like make posts about the games I've played. I had agreed to help a friend out on a project he was working on and I've dedicated these past 2.5 weeks towards that work. I can't really talk about it much, but I can say that I went through a list of 300 mobile games to test and analyze. Whenever I did have time, I've been playing through the new games I got during Steam Summer Sale.
So for the past three days, I've been just sorting out my thoughts and figuring out what to do from here. In terms of entertainment, Fire Emblem Three Houses releases next Friday, EVO 2019 is a week after that, Astral Chain releases at the end of August, Daemon X Machina comes out two weeks after that, and Code Vein comes out at the end of September. So my plate is pretty full in terms of Videogames the next three months or so. In terms of productivity, I think I want to start going to the gym again this upcoming Monday. I know I've been ignoring my health again with going to sleep late and not exercising. I'm going to try to finish up the remix I was working on before the end of the month. Then I need to figure out what I want to do next because there's just too much I want to do right now. I want to be able to revisit my previous work and remaster them, work on new remixes, work on original work for my portfolio, learn and create animations that I've had ideas for years now, record my past piano arrangements, etc. I feel my mind wandering and feeling unfocused ever since I got back from Japan earlier this year. It still feels like a dream, having gone to Japan and experience what it had to offer there. I have been able to focus enough to work on improving mastering, but I feel like I'm not getting enough work done this year. But the fact that I'm still motivated to learn, improve, and produce work is enough to get me on the right path. I don't know my exact plans yet for the rest of the year, but I'd like to finish that remix first more than anything.
Friday, June 14, 2019
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate E3 2019
So the day before the Nintendo Direct and the start of E3's Show Floor opened up, I wrote this post on Facebook:
"I know it, you know it, Sakurai hinted it: there's going to be a Smash Bros. DLC character reveal on tomorrow's Nintendo Direct. The question is, who is it going to be?
There was that rumor that the protagonist of Dragon Quest XI was going to be the next character.
There was another rumor that suggests Nintendo was working with Square-Enix on a character so maybe DQXI Protag is true, or maybe it's Sora?
Maybe it's a Hunter from Monster Hunter to battle the Rathalos?
Maybe it's something crazy like Dante from Devil May Cry?
Maybe it's Phantasy Star representation? The last time I mentioned Phantasy Star, the series wasn't relevant, but as of yesterday, it's EXTREMELY relevant!
Maybe it's a surprise indie character like Gunvolt from Azure Striker Gunvolt or Miriam from upcoming release (next Tuesday!) Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night?
Maybe Nintendo thought "screw what Sakurai said, we're putting in Goku!"?
MAYBE IT'S MASTER CHIEF FROM HALO?
With how things are right now, it's very difficult for Nintendo to make the next character reveal as exciting as the last one. These character reveals can be polarizing. As excited as I was for announcements like Cloud, Bayonetta, and Simon/Richter in the past, I noticed there were a decent amount of people that didn't care for the characters or were upset about it. The reality of it all is that the character reveal tomorrow is going to disappoint someone...I just hope it's not me.....
Maybe it's Banjo-Kazooie or Crash Bandicoot like everyone wants and then I'll be left wondering how I feel about it.....?"
This is what I wrote a few hours after watching the Direct:
"Luigi's Mansion 3 looks pretty fun. The first game was both entertaining and frustrating. So while I'm interested in 3, I'm not excited for it.
LoZ - Link's Awakening remake looks cute. I'm still not sure how I feel about the art style, but it should be just as fun as the original.
Trials of Mana; Seiken Densetsu 3 Remake! Now THIS was the one announcement that got me super excited. Omg, it looks so good. I was also surprised to see they're bringing over the Mana series collection. I've never played Seiken Densetsu 3 (even though I have a fan-translated rom sitting on my hard drive since high school.....) so I'm thinking of picking the collection up.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses already pre-ordered, so nothing more to say.
No More Heroes 3. Ugh, I wish I had bought No More Heroes 1 & 2 back on the Wii. They were hard games to find and when I did find them, they were kind of expensive. I know it's a series I'd enjoy. It's cool they're making a 3rd one in the main series.
Contra Rogue Corps. I've been wanting another Contra game forever, but I have to admit that this one looks kind of ugly. But it has online co-op, so that's good enough for me. I just hope the PC version also has online co-op.
Daemon X Machina. I had my pre-order canceled by Amazon for some reason. It might have been done so for all those who pre-ordered it with the 20% off deal so now I have to pay full price. I am super interested in the game, but not sure if I want to pick it up at full price after playing the beta.....
Panzer Dragoon. I'm so confused. Is this a Remake? A Reboot? Or an entirely new one?
Omg, I'm so ready for Astral Chain. Already pre-ordered.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order does look fun, but I have no one to play it with.....
Cadence of Hyrule. As much as I like Crypt of the NecroDancer, It's a stressful game. I'll keep this game in mind, but it'll be lower on my priority list.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons looks cute. Probably lower on my priority list considering I never have time to play Animal Crossing games (I barely touched the last one I bought).
Oooo, LoZ - Breath of the Wild sequel. I'm reminded that I really should continue playing through Breath of the Wild.....
Okay Smash Bros. Time.
The Hero. I feel annoyed that this was leaked months ago and that it was accurate. Seriously, leaks are ruining these reveals. I also feel sad that I'm not a super fan of Dragon Quest, having played all the games and really feeling a deep connection to the series. I've always wanted to get into the series, but feel overwhelmed by the amount of hours I'd need to put in to finish it all. I've played a few spin-offs and really liked them and have no doubt I'd enjoy the main series. Still, I thought this was a cool reveal with nice cinematics. His moveset looks like a mix between Roy, Link, and Robin. An even nicer touch, it looks like we get different skins with the protagonists from Dragon Quest 3, 4, and 8 from the default 11. And I know the smash community is sick of sword characters, but I love swords so I'm happy enough with the addition of this character. I think I'd be way more excited if I was a super fan (and I wish I was). Despite that, that main theme! I never get sick of hearing it! Despite not being a super fan of Dragon Quest, I feel like the main theme is one of the greatest, most memorable and iconic themes in videogame.
Banjo-Kazooie. I.....had a feeling Banjo-Kazooie was going to make it in. They were an important part of the N64 and really set the bar on what a 3D Action-Adventure game was capable of. And it's obvious there's desire for them in the community. So I felt they had a higher chance of being added to the roster over anyone else. Here's the thing: I used to hope that they would add Banjo-Kazooie in the past because they have a strong tie to Nintendo's history and they have a lot of moves for a somewhat interesting moveset in Smash. HOWEVER, ever since Cloud's announcement, I feel like the possibilities were limitless. All of a sudden, there were a lot more interesting characters that could be added in instead. So it's cool that they added in Banjo-Kazooie, but I also couldn't help but feel like the moveset they've shown are a bit bland. Maybe I'll feel differently when I actually play them.
Overall, both characters for smash are cool additions to the game, but I also have to admit that they didn't cause the same amount of excitement in me that Joker from Persona 5 did.
As for the rest of the direct, I'm interested in Luigi's Mansion 3, LoZ Link's Awakening, No More Heroes 3, Contra Rogue Corps, Daemon X Machina, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Cadence of Hyrule. I'm already sold on Trials of Mana Remake and collection, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and Astral Chain. So overall, I thought it was a good direct showing quite a few games to look forward to."
The Hero from Dragon Quest XI had a strong reaction from Japan while Banjo-Kazooie was a huge deal in the West. I'm happy to have both characters, but wasn't nearly as excited as everyone else. It was nice seeing their reactions and being happy for them.
Oh, except for the announcement of Phantasy Star Online 2, I pretty much reacted the same way.
"I know it, you know it, Sakurai hinted it: there's going to be a Smash Bros. DLC character reveal on tomorrow's Nintendo Direct. The question is, who is it going to be?
There was that rumor that the protagonist of Dragon Quest XI was going to be the next character.
There was another rumor that suggests Nintendo was working with Square-Enix on a character so maybe DQXI Protag is true, or maybe it's Sora?
Maybe it's a Hunter from Monster Hunter to battle the Rathalos?
Maybe it's something crazy like Dante from Devil May Cry?
Maybe it's Phantasy Star representation? The last time I mentioned Phantasy Star, the series wasn't relevant, but as of yesterday, it's EXTREMELY relevant!
Maybe it's a surprise indie character like Gunvolt from Azure Striker Gunvolt or Miriam from upcoming release (next Tuesday!) Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night?
Maybe Nintendo thought "screw what Sakurai said, we're putting in Goku!"?
MAYBE IT'S MASTER CHIEF FROM HALO?
With how things are right now, it's very difficult for Nintendo to make the next character reveal as exciting as the last one. These character reveals can be polarizing. As excited as I was for announcements like Cloud, Bayonetta, and Simon/Richter in the past, I noticed there were a decent amount of people that didn't care for the characters or were upset about it. The reality of it all is that the character reveal tomorrow is going to disappoint someone...I just hope it's not me.....
Maybe it's Banjo-Kazooie or Crash Bandicoot like everyone wants and then I'll be left wondering how I feel about it.....?"
This is what I wrote a few hours after watching the Direct:
"Luigi's Mansion 3 looks pretty fun. The first game was both entertaining and frustrating. So while I'm interested in 3, I'm not excited for it.
LoZ - Link's Awakening remake looks cute. I'm still not sure how I feel about the art style, but it should be just as fun as the original.
Trials of Mana; Seiken Densetsu 3 Remake! Now THIS was the one announcement that got me super excited. Omg, it looks so good. I was also surprised to see they're bringing over the Mana series collection. I've never played Seiken Densetsu 3 (even though I have a fan-translated rom sitting on my hard drive since high school.....) so I'm thinking of picking the collection up.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses already pre-ordered, so nothing more to say.
No More Heroes 3. Ugh, I wish I had bought No More Heroes 1 & 2 back on the Wii. They were hard games to find and when I did find them, they were kind of expensive. I know it's a series I'd enjoy. It's cool they're making a 3rd one in the main series.
Contra Rogue Corps. I've been wanting another Contra game forever, but I have to admit that this one looks kind of ugly. But it has online co-op, so that's good enough for me. I just hope the PC version also has online co-op.
Daemon X Machina. I had my pre-order canceled by Amazon for some reason. It might have been done so for all those who pre-ordered it with the 20% off deal so now I have to pay full price. I am super interested in the game, but not sure if I want to pick it up at full price after playing the beta.....
Panzer Dragoon. I'm so confused. Is this a Remake? A Reboot? Or an entirely new one?
Omg, I'm so ready for Astral Chain. Already pre-ordered.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order does look fun, but I have no one to play it with.....
Cadence of Hyrule. As much as I like Crypt of the NecroDancer, It's a stressful game. I'll keep this game in mind, but it'll be lower on my priority list.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons looks cute. Probably lower on my priority list considering I never have time to play Animal Crossing games (I barely touched the last one I bought).
Oooo, LoZ - Breath of the Wild sequel. I'm reminded that I really should continue playing through Breath of the Wild.....
Okay Smash Bros. Time.
The Hero. I feel annoyed that this was leaked months ago and that it was accurate. Seriously, leaks are ruining these reveals. I also feel sad that I'm not a super fan of Dragon Quest, having played all the games and really feeling a deep connection to the series. I've always wanted to get into the series, but feel overwhelmed by the amount of hours I'd need to put in to finish it all. I've played a few spin-offs and really liked them and have no doubt I'd enjoy the main series. Still, I thought this was a cool reveal with nice cinematics. His moveset looks like a mix between Roy, Link, and Robin. An even nicer touch, it looks like we get different skins with the protagonists from Dragon Quest 3, 4, and 8 from the default 11. And I know the smash community is sick of sword characters, but I love swords so I'm happy enough with the addition of this character. I think I'd be way more excited if I was a super fan (and I wish I was). Despite that, that main theme! I never get sick of hearing it! Despite not being a super fan of Dragon Quest, I feel like the main theme is one of the greatest, most memorable and iconic themes in videogame.
Banjo-Kazooie. I.....had a feeling Banjo-Kazooie was going to make it in. They were an important part of the N64 and really set the bar on what a 3D Action-Adventure game was capable of. And it's obvious there's desire for them in the community. So I felt they had a higher chance of being added to the roster over anyone else. Here's the thing: I used to hope that they would add Banjo-Kazooie in the past because they have a strong tie to Nintendo's history and they have a lot of moves for a somewhat interesting moveset in Smash. HOWEVER, ever since Cloud's announcement, I feel like the possibilities were limitless. All of a sudden, there were a lot more interesting characters that could be added in instead. So it's cool that they added in Banjo-Kazooie, but I also couldn't help but feel like the moveset they've shown are a bit bland. Maybe I'll feel differently when I actually play them.
Overall, both characters for smash are cool additions to the game, but I also have to admit that they didn't cause the same amount of excitement in me that Joker from Persona 5 did.
As for the rest of the direct, I'm interested in Luigi's Mansion 3, LoZ Link's Awakening, No More Heroes 3, Contra Rogue Corps, Daemon X Machina, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Cadence of Hyrule. I'm already sold on Trials of Mana Remake and collection, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and Astral Chain. So overall, I thought it was a good direct showing quite a few games to look forward to."
The Hero from Dragon Quest XI had a strong reaction from Japan while Banjo-Kazooie was a huge deal in the West. I'm happy to have both characters, but wasn't nearly as excited as everyone else. It was nice seeing their reactions and being happy for them.
Oh, except for the announcement of Phantasy Star Online 2, I pretty much reacted the same way.
Thursday, June 13, 2019
E3 2019 Deprived of Show Floor News
The games announced at this year's E3 were pretty interesting and I feel like we got a decent amount of things to look forward to, but I feel like this year's E3 wasn't as exciting. The one thing that really bugs me about this year's E3 was that I found little to no information on Floor Show games. All news outlet just followed up or repeated everything we've heard at the conferences before the E3 Show Floor opened up. Were there no other games and companies there? Has that many Japanese companies really backed out of E3 in favor of Tokyo Game Show now? Is E3 just the conferences and not the Show Floor now? In any case, let's jump into what was shown and talked about.
[Astral Chain - NS]
I'm so ready for Astral Chain! Platinum Games' newest Hack-n-Slash Action game is set in a really cool futuristic metropolis with some crazy visuals exclusively for the Nintendo Switch. I'm more excited about this game than any other Switch title coming out this year (possibly even more than Fire Emblem: Three Houses)! It releases on August 30th, 2019.
[Code Vein - PS4, XB1, PC]
[Daemon X Machina - NS]
I had a lot of fun with the Doom reboot. It had the fast-paced action of old-school First-Person Shooters with the interesting design choices of modern day games that made a challenging, but totally satisfying experience. From what I understand, this next Doom will be open-world with new weapons, new mechanics, but a lot of the same satisfying combat. They gave us a release date of November 22nd, 2019. Not a game I'm going to pick up on day one, but one I'll definitely pick up sometime in the future.
[Final Fantasy VII Remake - PS4]
So they gave a release date of March 3, 2020, but for the first episode of who knows how many. The game is looking incredible and faithful to the original, the combat system seems streamlined and fun, and it really looks like it will live up to the hype it has garnered over the years. For me, I want to play the whole friggin' game all at once, which might not be for a while. I might honestly have to wait until 2030 before I can play the full game, and that scares me a little. But in terms of what they've shown us so far, it looks great.
[Fire Emblem: Three Houses - NS]
The newest iteration in the series looks fairly different from its predecessors in art style and in gameplay in terms of relationship building. My Fire Emblem backlog is weeping as Three Houses is close to its release date of July 26th, 2019. I eventually get around to playing the Fire Emblem games, but I think I'll try to finish this one when it comes out first.
[Granblue Fantasy Versus - PS4]
I'm going to wait for the PC version (and hopefully there is one), but I'm already excited for the game. I do play Granblue Fantasy, but I'm not an avid player. It's certainly not the franchise I was expecting Arc System Works to make into a fighting game next, but it's a welcome addition. There's still no release date and the roster is still seemingly limited, but that just means there's time to change that.
[Halo Infinite - XB1, PC]
I'm usually not excited for Halo games because I don't have an Xbox to play them on or know anyone that owns one. But this one is being developed for PC as well, so that changes everything. I love Halo from its simplistic and engaging gameplay to its rich lore. It was also a great multiplayer game in the past, being able to play 2-player co-op with my friend or to play 4 v 4 on 2 Xbox 360s when there were a lot of us playing at once. But it's been a really long time since I've had any access to an Xbox and I miss playing the game. I just hope it'll be available on Steam when it hits PC. I'm super excited that the Master Chief Collection is coming to Steam PC and have wanted that for a long time. Now I'm going to be able to play all those Halo games I missed out on as well as revisit the first two games.
[Oninaki - PS4, NS, PC]
I haven't played Tokyo RPG Factory's other 2 games, but a friend told me they were rather underwhelming. I never got to try them since they're always expensive (even on sale) and I'm intimidated from buying another long RPG. Oninaki looks a lot faster-paced and seems like a lot of fun though. The other two games seemed more about the story, art style and music as its selling point while the gameplay they've shown for Oninaki has me really interested. I'll still wait for a sale before picking it up, but I'll probably play this one before the other two games. Oninaki releases on August 22nd, 2019.
[Phantasy Star Online 2 - XB1, PC]
Did this seriously drop in the middle of Microsoft's conference? I was totally blindsided by this news. I was eating breakfast with my mom sitting across from me on the table while I was watching the live stream of Microsoft's conference. Sega's logo pops up and the first thought that popped into my head was "oh, it's a new Sonic game." As the music started and I heard the first 5 notes, I thought it was Sonic Forces' main theme for a second and hummed along with the next 7 notes. All of a sudden, I slammed both my hands on the table and went "WAIT, THAT'S NOT SONIC, THAT'S PHANTASY STAR!" There was no way what I thought was happening was reality. As soon as I saw the Hunter's back walking up to the port, a sight I'm very familiar with from all the times I've watched the trailer and started up the game on the JP servers back 7 years ago, I started slamming on the table even more and screaming with my half broken voice from coughing so much from whatever I got sick with the past week "OMG, OMG, AFTER 7 YEARS OF WAITING, IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING, I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S HAPPENING! 7 YEARS! 7 YEARS OF WAITING!" My mom was just going "What?" while my dad ran downstairs with his own screaming of "WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT'S WRONG?" Barely able to speak, I just kept repeating "7 YEARS OF WAITING! IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING!" After calming down a bit and explaining what I just saw, my dad's response was "isn't that an old game?" Yes, but this point, it's an old game and it took this long for Sega to finally make some sort of deal to bring it over to the West so we can freaking play it. I wondered year after year if I should just give up waiting and go back to the JP servers to play the game. I feared that if I didn't, the servers would shut down and I would definitely not be able to play it. In fact, I had planned on finally starting it up again this Summer and told my friends "I gave them a fair shot and waited for so many years." One of my friends joked and said "And THAT'S when they decide to release it for the West." Rather close to the mark, I laughed at the thought. It seems like the West will get ALL content already available from the JP servers which means we get stuff all the way up to Episode 6. As excited as I am to FINALLY play Phantasy Star Online 2 in English, I'm also a bit cautious because E3 2012 promised us PSO2 in Summer of 2013 and we haven't heard any news since then until now. But the fact that it seems Microsoft has a hand in this makes me feel a bit more confident that they'll follow through. Phantasy Star Online 2 will be available Free-to-Play on Xbox One and PC in Spring of 2020.
Out of all the new games announced at E3 this year, this was definitely the one I'm most excited for. I have not played Seiken Densetsu 3, and it seems like they're going to bring the Mana Collection over in English as well so we'll finally have an officially translated version of it. But to get a remake like this was not something I expected. It looks so good! It puts the Secret of Mana remake to shame! They showed what kind of world it takes place in, what kind of characters were going to be in it, and most importantly how the combat was going to play. There were an obscene amount of new games that just showed a small teaser or a cinematic that explained nothing about what kind of game it was, what it was about, or what the actual game will look like. So it was nice to get a trailer that gave everything I wanted to know about the game, I'm sold! It's coming Early 2020. I hope it avoids March because March 2020 is already jam packed with games.
Games I want to talk about:
[Borderlands 3] - So we already know about Borderlands 3 and I'm already excited for it. It's unfortunate that it'll have a half year exclusivity with the Epic Game Store (better than one year, but still). So it'll be a while before I pick it up and play it.
[Cyberpunk 2077] - I'm still very confused on what sort of game this will be. I'm guessing it'll be a bit more like Deus Ex. I'm just highly fascinated by the environment and the immersive world they've created.
[Darksiders Genesis] - So it seems like they're making a top-down Darksiders that'll play a lot like Diablo and I'm totally okay with that. At the very least, they showed gameplay to us in the trailer.
[Deathloop] - Arkane Studios' newest game didn't show any gameplay, but I trust their work and the concept sounds like being able to use a lot of cool powers similar to the Dishonored series, but in a much more action-orientated environment over their usual stealth-style gameplay. I'm pretty excited to see more of this in the future.
[Death Stranding] - Okay, I'm still confused on what kind of game this is and it's releasing this year. I'm more interested in knowing what kind of kooky story this game has than actually getting my hand on it to play.
[Dying Light 2] - Dying Light was a fun game and did a lot of things right, so I'm curious to see how it's evolved since then. I'm a little iffy on the whole "choice changes the story drastically" idea because I rarely see it done well.
[Elden Ring] - FROM Software's newest game, that's all I needed to know.
[Ghostwire: Tokyo] - This graphics and art style they showed was really impressive, but I'm really sad they didn't explain anything about gameplay or story. I love Shinji Mikami's work, so I'm looking forward to seeing more of this game in the future.
[The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel] - I need to get back to play Breath of the Wild.....Still, the fact that they're making a direct sequel to a Zelda game is surprising and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with what they already have.
[No More Heroes 3] - I hope they bring No More Heroes 1 & 2 to switch since I never got to play them, but it's cool they're making a 3rd game in the main series.
[Outriders] - Another game with very little information. But it's by the creators of Bulletstorm and it'll be a drop-in, drop-out 3-player co-op game so that certainly caught my attention.
[Tales of Arise] - Wow, they're really just stepping it up with each iteration of the Tales series. It looks incredible and will definitely pick it up in the future, if not to finally play my ridiculous Tales backlog, then at least to add to the collection.
[Tom Clany's Rainbow Six Quarantine] - So Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege had a special event where it was a co-op mode of sorts fighting mutated enemies. It was a big hit in the community and fans asked for a stand alone game that's more refined and focused for that sort of gameplay. It'll be nice for another option of a co-op game to play with my friends.
Overall, it was an "Okay" E3. Everything I'm excited for, we already knew about. All the new games announced that I'm interested in, we don't know nearly enough about. The most interesting games, otherwise, are all the indie games that showed up at E3. That's one thing down for Summer Events. I also just found out that Summer Games Done Quick is on the same week as Steam Summer Sales again like last year. It's unfortunate to have both going at the same time, but I also find myself watching the live stream for Games Done Quick less and less each year. We're only 5 days away from the release of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and that's what I'm looking forward to most at the moment.
New Games I'm Interested in / Keeping an eye on:
Baldur's Gate 3
Bite the Bullet
Bleeding Edge
Chivalry 2
CrisTales
Darksiders Genesis
Deathloop
Devolver Bootleg
Dragonball Z Kakarot
Elden Ring
Enter the Gungeon: House of the Gundead
Ghostwire: Tokyo
Gods & Monsters
Hellpoint
Keen
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel
Marvel Avengers
Minecraft Dungeons
No More Heroes 3
Outriders
Roller Champions
SkateBird
Spiritfarer
Steambirds Alliance
Star Renegades
Super Crush KO
Tales of Arise
The Messenger: Picnic Panic
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Quarantine
Trials of Mana Remake
Watch Dogs: Legion
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
Zombie Army 4: Dead War
Update on Old Games I'm interested in:
Anew: The Distant Light
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Astral Chain
Battlefield 5
Battletoads
Biomutant
Borderlands 3
Boyfriend Dungeon
Cadence of Hyrule
Catherine: Full Body
Children of Morta
Code Vein
Control
Crash Team Racing
Creature in the Well
Cyberpunk 2077
Death Stranding
Daemon X Machina
Doom Eternal
Dragon Quest Builders 2
Dragon Quest 11 S
Dying Light 2
Final Fantasy VII Remake
Final Fantasy VIII Remaster
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Foregone
Gears 5
Grandia HD Collection
Granblue Fantasy Versus
Greedfall
Halo Infinite
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Luigi's Mansion 3
Mana Series Collection
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order
My Friend Pedro
Oninaki
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Persona 5 Royal
Phantasy Star Online 2
Phoenix Point
Pokémon Sword and Shield
PsychoNauts 2
Remnant: From the Ashes
Shenmue III
Spyro: Reignited Trilogy
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
Super Mario Maker 2
The Outer Worlds
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint
Trails of Cold Steel III
Trine 4: the Nightmare Prince
Valfaris
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2
Way to the Woods
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Wrath: Aeon of Ruin
Games I'm Excited For:
[Astral Chain - NS]
I'm so ready for Astral Chain! Platinum Games' newest Hack-n-Slash Action game is set in a really cool futuristic metropolis with some crazy visuals exclusively for the Nintendo Switch. I'm more excited about this game than any other Switch title coming out this year (possibly even more than Fire Emblem: Three Houses)! It releases on August 30th, 2019.
[Code Vein - PS4, XB1, PC]
We were supposed to get this game last year in September, but was said to have been delayed. I have to admit that it looked rather rough from what they showed last year. When it reappeared a month or so ago, it showed a much more polished game with a richer environment. I'm pretty interested in this animé-esque Dark Souls that I could co-op with my friend. I'm also excited that Go Shiina composed the music! Code Vein arrives on September 27th, 2019, hopefully without any delays this time.
[Daemon X Machina - NS]
So I wasn't sure if I wanted to re-pre-order this game after I had pre-ordered it with 20% off only to receive an email months later that canceled the order (possibly by Nintendo, the publisher). I tried out the beta and it was kind of fun, but also a bit underwhelming. After watching some more gameplay footages and looking at what games we were getting this year for the Nintendo Switch (which isn't much), I decided to make another pre-order at full price and support the game. I've been itching for a mech game and I did feel the potential for this game. I just hope it really is better than what I played in the beta. Release date is September 13th, 2019.
[Doom Eternal - PS4, XB1, NS, PC]
[Doom Eternal - PS4, XB1, NS, PC]
I had a lot of fun with the Doom reboot. It had the fast-paced action of old-school First-Person Shooters with the interesting design choices of modern day games that made a challenging, but totally satisfying experience. From what I understand, this next Doom will be open-world with new weapons, new mechanics, but a lot of the same satisfying combat. They gave us a release date of November 22nd, 2019. Not a game I'm going to pick up on day one, but one I'll definitely pick up sometime in the future.
[Final Fantasy VII Remake - PS4]
So they gave a release date of March 3, 2020, but for the first episode of who knows how many. The game is looking incredible and faithful to the original, the combat system seems streamlined and fun, and it really looks like it will live up to the hype it has garnered over the years. For me, I want to play the whole friggin' game all at once, which might not be for a while. I might honestly have to wait until 2030 before I can play the full game, and that scares me a little. But in terms of what they've shown us so far, it looks great.
[Fire Emblem: Three Houses - NS]
The newest iteration in the series looks fairly different from its predecessors in art style and in gameplay in terms of relationship building. My Fire Emblem backlog is weeping as Three Houses is close to its release date of July 26th, 2019. I eventually get around to playing the Fire Emblem games, but I think I'll try to finish this one when it comes out first.
[Granblue Fantasy Versus - PS4]
I'm going to wait for the PC version (and hopefully there is one), but I'm already excited for the game. I do play Granblue Fantasy, but I'm not an avid player. It's certainly not the franchise I was expecting Arc System Works to make into a fighting game next, but it's a welcome addition. There's still no release date and the roster is still seemingly limited, but that just means there's time to change that.
[Halo Infinite - XB1, PC]
I'm usually not excited for Halo games because I don't have an Xbox to play them on or know anyone that owns one. But this one is being developed for PC as well, so that changes everything. I love Halo from its simplistic and engaging gameplay to its rich lore. It was also a great multiplayer game in the past, being able to play 2-player co-op with my friend or to play 4 v 4 on 2 Xbox 360s when there were a lot of us playing at once. But it's been a really long time since I've had any access to an Xbox and I miss playing the game. I just hope it'll be available on Steam when it hits PC. I'm super excited that the Master Chief Collection is coming to Steam PC and have wanted that for a long time. Now I'm going to be able to play all those Halo games I missed out on as well as revisit the first two games.
[Oninaki - PS4, NS, PC]
I haven't played Tokyo RPG Factory's other 2 games, but a friend told me they were rather underwhelming. I never got to try them since they're always expensive (even on sale) and I'm intimidated from buying another long RPG. Oninaki looks a lot faster-paced and seems like a lot of fun though. The other two games seemed more about the story, art style and music as its selling point while the gameplay they've shown for Oninaki has me really interested. I'll still wait for a sale before picking it up, but I'll probably play this one before the other two games. Oninaki releases on August 22nd, 2019.
[Phantasy Star Online 2 - XB1, PC]
Did this seriously drop in the middle of Microsoft's conference? I was totally blindsided by this news. I was eating breakfast with my mom sitting across from me on the table while I was watching the live stream of Microsoft's conference. Sega's logo pops up and the first thought that popped into my head was "oh, it's a new Sonic game." As the music started and I heard the first 5 notes, I thought it was Sonic Forces' main theme for a second and hummed along with the next 7 notes. All of a sudden, I slammed both my hands on the table and went "WAIT, THAT'S NOT SONIC, THAT'S PHANTASY STAR!" There was no way what I thought was happening was reality. As soon as I saw the Hunter's back walking up to the port, a sight I'm very familiar with from all the times I've watched the trailer and started up the game on the JP servers back 7 years ago, I started slamming on the table even more and screaming with my half broken voice from coughing so much from whatever I got sick with the past week "OMG, OMG, AFTER 7 YEARS OF WAITING, IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING, I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S HAPPENING! 7 YEARS! 7 YEARS OF WAITING!" My mom was just going "What?" while my dad ran downstairs with his own screaming of "WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT'S WRONG?" Barely able to speak, I just kept repeating "7 YEARS OF WAITING! IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING!" After calming down a bit and explaining what I just saw, my dad's response was "isn't that an old game?" Yes, but this point, it's an old game and it took this long for Sega to finally make some sort of deal to bring it over to the West so we can freaking play it. I wondered year after year if I should just give up waiting and go back to the JP servers to play the game. I feared that if I didn't, the servers would shut down and I would definitely not be able to play it. In fact, I had planned on finally starting it up again this Summer and told my friends "I gave them a fair shot and waited for so many years." One of my friends joked and said "And THAT'S when they decide to release it for the West." Rather close to the mark, I laughed at the thought. It seems like the West will get ALL content already available from the JP servers which means we get stuff all the way up to Episode 6. As excited as I am to FINALLY play Phantasy Star Online 2 in English, I'm also a bit cautious because E3 2012 promised us PSO2 in Summer of 2013 and we haven't heard any news since then until now. But the fact that it seems Microsoft has a hand in this makes me feel a bit more confident that they'll follow through. Phantasy Star Online 2 will be available Free-to-Play on Xbox One and PC in Spring of 2020.
[The Outer Worlds - PS4, XB1, PC]
It's the "Totally not Fallout: New Vegas" game that Obsidian Entertainment has been working on. While it has no connection to the Fallout universe, it seems it has a lot of similarities to New Vegas to warrant the comparison. It does seems like a really fun and colorful adventure to partake in, but my friend (who has a terrifying amount of hours in Fallout: New Vegas) believes it's best to stay cautiously excited. It'll release on October 25th, 2019.
[Trials of Mana Remake - NS, PC]
It's the "Totally not Fallout: New Vegas" game that Obsidian Entertainment has been working on. While it has no connection to the Fallout universe, it seems it has a lot of similarities to New Vegas to warrant the comparison. It does seems like a really fun and colorful adventure to partake in, but my friend (who has a terrifying amount of hours in Fallout: New Vegas) believes it's best to stay cautiously excited. It'll release on October 25th, 2019.
[Trials of Mana Remake - NS, PC]
Out of all the new games announced at E3 this year, this was definitely the one I'm most excited for. I have not played Seiken Densetsu 3, and it seems like they're going to bring the Mana Collection over in English as well so we'll finally have an officially translated version of it. But to get a remake like this was not something I expected. It looks so good! It puts the Secret of Mana remake to shame! They showed what kind of world it takes place in, what kind of characters were going to be in it, and most importantly how the combat was going to play. There were an obscene amount of new games that just showed a small teaser or a cinematic that explained nothing about what kind of game it was, what it was about, or what the actual game will look like. So it was nice to get a trailer that gave everything I wanted to know about the game, I'm sold! It's coming Early 2020. I hope it avoids March because March 2020 is already jam packed with games.
Games I want to talk about:
[Borderlands 3] - So we already know about Borderlands 3 and I'm already excited for it. It's unfortunate that it'll have a half year exclusivity with the Epic Game Store (better than one year, but still). So it'll be a while before I pick it up and play it.
[Cyberpunk 2077] - I'm still very confused on what sort of game this will be. I'm guessing it'll be a bit more like Deus Ex. I'm just highly fascinated by the environment and the immersive world they've created.
[Darksiders Genesis] - So it seems like they're making a top-down Darksiders that'll play a lot like Diablo and I'm totally okay with that. At the very least, they showed gameplay to us in the trailer.
[Deathloop] - Arkane Studios' newest game didn't show any gameplay, but I trust their work and the concept sounds like being able to use a lot of cool powers similar to the Dishonored series, but in a much more action-orientated environment over their usual stealth-style gameplay. I'm pretty excited to see more of this in the future.
[Death Stranding] - Okay, I'm still confused on what kind of game this is and it's releasing this year. I'm more interested in knowing what kind of kooky story this game has than actually getting my hand on it to play.
[Dying Light 2] - Dying Light was a fun game and did a lot of things right, so I'm curious to see how it's evolved since then. I'm a little iffy on the whole "choice changes the story drastically" idea because I rarely see it done well.
[Elden Ring] - FROM Software's newest game, that's all I needed to know.
[Ghostwire: Tokyo] - This graphics and art style they showed was really impressive, but I'm really sad they didn't explain anything about gameplay or story. I love Shinji Mikami's work, so I'm looking forward to seeing more of this game in the future.
[The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel] - I need to get back to play Breath of the Wild.....Still, the fact that they're making a direct sequel to a Zelda game is surprising and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with what they already have.
[No More Heroes 3] - I hope they bring No More Heroes 1 & 2 to switch since I never got to play them, but it's cool they're making a 3rd game in the main series.
[Outriders] - Another game with very little information. But it's by the creators of Bulletstorm and it'll be a drop-in, drop-out 3-player co-op game so that certainly caught my attention.
[Tales of Arise] - Wow, they're really just stepping it up with each iteration of the Tales series. It looks incredible and will definitely pick it up in the future, if not to finally play my ridiculous Tales backlog, then at least to add to the collection.
[Tom Clany's Rainbow Six Quarantine] - So Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege had a special event where it was a co-op mode of sorts fighting mutated enemies. It was a big hit in the community and fans asked for a stand alone game that's more refined and focused for that sort of gameplay. It'll be nice for another option of a co-op game to play with my friends.
Overall, it was an "Okay" E3. Everything I'm excited for, we already knew about. All the new games announced that I'm interested in, we don't know nearly enough about. The most interesting games, otherwise, are all the indie games that showed up at E3. That's one thing down for Summer Events. I also just found out that Summer Games Done Quick is on the same week as Steam Summer Sales again like last year. It's unfortunate to have both going at the same time, but I also find myself watching the live stream for Games Done Quick less and less each year. We're only 5 days away from the release of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and that's what I'm looking forward to most at the moment.
New Games I'm Interested in / Keeping an eye on:
Baldur's Gate 3
Bite the Bullet
Bleeding Edge
Chivalry 2
CrisTales
Darksiders Genesis
Deathloop
Devolver Bootleg
Dragonball Z Kakarot
Elden Ring
Enter the Gungeon: House of the Gundead
Ghostwire: Tokyo
Gods & Monsters
Hellpoint
Keen
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel
Marvel Avengers
Minecraft Dungeons
No More Heroes 3
Outriders
Roller Champions
SkateBird
Spiritfarer
Steambirds Alliance
Star Renegades
Super Crush KO
Tales of Arise
The Messenger: Picnic Panic
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Quarantine
Trials of Mana Remake
Watch Dogs: Legion
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
Zombie Army 4: Dead War
Update on Old Games I'm interested in:
Anew: The Distant Light
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Astral Chain
Battlefield 5
Battletoads
Biomutant
Borderlands 3
Boyfriend Dungeon
Cadence of Hyrule
Catherine: Full Body
Children of Morta
Code Vein
Control
Crash Team Racing
Creature in the Well
Cyberpunk 2077
Death Stranding
Daemon X Machina
Doom Eternal
Dragon Quest Builders 2
Dragon Quest 11 S
Dying Light 2
Final Fantasy VII Remake
Final Fantasy VIII Remaster
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Foregone
Gears 5
Grandia HD Collection
Granblue Fantasy Versus
Greedfall
Halo Infinite
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Luigi's Mansion 3
Mana Series Collection
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order
My Friend Pedro
Oninaki
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Persona 5 Royal
Phantasy Star Online 2
Phoenix Point
Pokémon Sword and Shield
PsychoNauts 2
Remnant: From the Ashes
Shenmue III
Spyro: Reignited Trilogy
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
Super Mario Maker 2
The Outer Worlds
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint
Trails of Cold Steel III
Trine 4: the Nightmare Prince
Valfaris
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2
Way to the Woods
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Wrath: Aeon of Ruin
Friday, June 7, 2019
Suffering right before Summer Events
It almost feels like I get sick and face allergies every year now. In past years, I'd normally get sick earlier in the year with some type of flu and then suffer through several days of allergies. I usually know when I get sick with a fever, feeling cold, and a lot of coughing. But this time, it was a bit unusual. I believe it was Monday night that I started to feel a bit dry in the throat on the left side and I thought it might be because I was Yeet Hay (I don't think there's an English word for it). Essentially, I ate too much food that causes an imbalance my body to react in weird ways.
Throughout Tuesday, I felt my throat feeling worse and the left side of the throat began to feel sore. By night time, I started feeling my allergies kick in with a runny and congested nose and watery eyes. Feeling kind of out of it, I went to bed early. Because of the amount of water I drank that day, I was waking up every hour to go to the bathroom. Thinking because it was because I was Yeet Hay, I was hallucinating a lot (or feeling half-awake and half-asleep) throughout the night. I woke up covered in sweat a few times and thought it was strange. Wednesday, I started feeling particularly worse. My throat was now sore on the right side instead of the left. My allergies started to become really bad and I was having a difficult time seeing and breathing. After suffering another day of ailments, I went to bed early again with the same intense hallucinations while remember one of them this time. I remember feeling like I was on a pirate ship or some type of vessel out at sea with the waves knocking me back and forth. I jumped out of bed, covered in sweat again, feeling quite disorientated and feeling like the room was rocking back and forth. At the very least, I seemed to have slept a bit more peacefully the rest of the night.
Thursday, yesterday, was probably the worst day (and hopefully not today). I woke up feeling weak and tired, coughed up some thick mucus, my allergies came in full force and the pressure from the congestion was causing the worst pain in my head and eyes. My allergies and pain forced my to lie in bed quite a few times throughout the day, yet I couldn't fall asleep. Adding in a bit more frequent coughing, I was really confused with what kind of ailment I could possibly be facing. I didn't have a fever and I wasn't bedridden, yet I felt miserable. Finally reaching midnight, I got into bed hoping to fall asleep and hoped all the pain in my head and eyes would be gone by the next morning. It took a while, but I managed to fall asleep only to wake up to myself coughing uncontrollably. The amount of mucus that flowed back down my system has caused an unpleasant irritation with my breathing which causes me to cough the phlegm out. Trying to deal with it and working to fall back asleep, I'd wake up a few times from the coughing.
This morning, it feels like the worst is over. I feel exhausted and sore from the pain I was enduring and the amount of coughing I was doing. Allergies seems to have died down a bit, but I'm still feeling a slight reaction with itchy nose and eyes, semi-watery eyes and sneezing. Coughing seems to be the worst today though, possibly because the body is trying to expel the rest of the phlegm still stuck. I'm not sure if I was unlucky to have both illness and allergies attack me both at once or be grateful that I only had to suffer a few short (well, it felt extremely long) days rather than be sick and then suffer through allergies like I have in the past. I'm just hoping I make a speedy recovery and be able to finish my latest remix before June 18th because I know I'll be playing a lot of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night when it releases. I'll certainly be distracted by E3 news this upcoming week as well.
Certainly a lot to look forward to the next 3 weeks: E3, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night releases, Super Neptunia RPG releases, and Steam Summer Sales.
Throughout Tuesday, I felt my throat feeling worse and the left side of the throat began to feel sore. By night time, I started feeling my allergies kick in with a runny and congested nose and watery eyes. Feeling kind of out of it, I went to bed early. Because of the amount of water I drank that day, I was waking up every hour to go to the bathroom. Thinking because it was because I was Yeet Hay, I was hallucinating a lot (or feeling half-awake and half-asleep) throughout the night. I woke up covered in sweat a few times and thought it was strange. Wednesday, I started feeling particularly worse. My throat was now sore on the right side instead of the left. My allergies started to become really bad and I was having a difficult time seeing and breathing. After suffering another day of ailments, I went to bed early again with the same intense hallucinations while remember one of them this time. I remember feeling like I was on a pirate ship or some type of vessel out at sea with the waves knocking me back and forth. I jumped out of bed, covered in sweat again, feeling quite disorientated and feeling like the room was rocking back and forth. At the very least, I seemed to have slept a bit more peacefully the rest of the night.
Thursday, yesterday, was probably the worst day (and hopefully not today). I woke up feeling weak and tired, coughed up some thick mucus, my allergies came in full force and the pressure from the congestion was causing the worst pain in my head and eyes. My allergies and pain forced my to lie in bed quite a few times throughout the day, yet I couldn't fall asleep. Adding in a bit more frequent coughing, I was really confused with what kind of ailment I could possibly be facing. I didn't have a fever and I wasn't bedridden, yet I felt miserable. Finally reaching midnight, I got into bed hoping to fall asleep and hoped all the pain in my head and eyes would be gone by the next morning. It took a while, but I managed to fall asleep only to wake up to myself coughing uncontrollably. The amount of mucus that flowed back down my system has caused an unpleasant irritation with my breathing which causes me to cough the phlegm out. Trying to deal with it and working to fall back asleep, I'd wake up a few times from the coughing.
This morning, it feels like the worst is over. I feel exhausted and sore from the pain I was enduring and the amount of coughing I was doing. Allergies seems to have died down a bit, but I'm still feeling a slight reaction with itchy nose and eyes, semi-watery eyes and sneezing. Coughing seems to be the worst today though, possibly because the body is trying to expel the rest of the phlegm still stuck. I'm not sure if I was unlucky to have both illness and allergies attack me both at once or be grateful that I only had to suffer a few short (well, it felt extremely long) days rather than be sick and then suffer through allergies like I have in the past. I'm just hoping I make a speedy recovery and be able to finish my latest remix before June 18th because I know I'll be playing a lot of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night when it releases. I'll certainly be distracted by E3 news this upcoming week as well.
Certainly a lot to look forward to the next 3 weeks: E3, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night releases, Super Neptunia RPG releases, and Steam Summer Sales.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Good progress, but not enough
I wanted to use the time in May to work on and finish a new remix I had planned out already and to spend a bit more time on games to work on my backlog so I can cycle in some new games before my pre-orders start coming in the next 3 months. Getting the remix started was a small bit of trouble. It always is when I'm starting with nothing and having to build the basis for the track and trying to remember what I wanted the remix to sound like while working on it. But once I got the main parts down, filling in the rest of it was a lot easier. Despite the time I put into the work, I'm only about 50-60% done. I was hoping to finish by the end of the month, but that seems highly unlikely now since I want to do a bit of house work the next few days before my mom comes back from her trip. The remix is coming along nicely, but I have a lot more work to do before it's even close to finish and definitely going to bleed into a good portion of June before I finish. I still have a lot of work I want to finish before I fully update my portfolio and start applying for jobs again with it, so it's got me a bit worried. It especially has me worried since June is approaching. E3, Steam Summer Sales, Summer Games Done Quick, EVO and a few pre-ordered games are going to be impeding on my focus and productivity throughout the Summer as it usually does. Still, I'm looking forward to all those things this year and feel pretty excited that it's almost time for them.
In terms of completing games this month, I managed to get through a whopping 10 games! Unfortunately, they were all on PC with the exception of one being a mobile game. I wanted to focus a bit more on console games this past month so I can delete some games on my PS4 to free up space for the new games coming in the next few months (I really hate how data is managed and stored for PS4). I got back on my PS4 last night to try to get through more of Uncharted 4 since it's taking up 63 GB and Lapis x Labyrinth released today. Looking through a game guide, I'm only halfway through the game. On the bright side, I finished a good portion of my priority list on PC and am close to ready to cycle in a new batch. There are a LOT of games I want to play next on PC and so the next list of games is a bit intimidating. Even with the semi-extra time I've spent on games this past month, I feel like I'm still not putting enough time into them. There just doesn't feel like there's enough time in the day to do everything. Last month, all my time was spent on reading and working. This month, all my time was spent working and getting through backlog games. There isn't time for other things I want and NEED to do. I miss watching animé. It's been a long time since I've had time to sit down to just watch a show and relax (other than watching High Score Girl with my sister when I got back from Japan earlier this year). I couldn't help it and watched the first episode of Wataten yesterday. It's......weird to say the least, but it's filled with cuteness and humor. In terms of what I NEED to do, it's exercise. Taking the time out of the day to exercise is a lot more than one would think until you start releasing how much less time is taken out for everything else you do in the day. I did some walking every now and then this past month, but I need actual cardio.
I'm not sure what's in store or planned these next 3 months, but I'm hoping to get some work done along with all the fun that I'll (hopefully) have.
In terms of completing games this month, I managed to get through a whopping 10 games! Unfortunately, they were all on PC with the exception of one being a mobile game. I wanted to focus a bit more on console games this past month so I can delete some games on my PS4 to free up space for the new games coming in the next few months (I really hate how data is managed and stored for PS4). I got back on my PS4 last night to try to get through more of Uncharted 4 since it's taking up 63 GB and Lapis x Labyrinth released today. Looking through a game guide, I'm only halfway through the game. On the bright side, I finished a good portion of my priority list on PC and am close to ready to cycle in a new batch. There are a LOT of games I want to play next on PC and so the next list of games is a bit intimidating. Even with the semi-extra time I've spent on games this past month, I feel like I'm still not putting enough time into them. There just doesn't feel like there's enough time in the day to do everything. Last month, all my time was spent on reading and working. This month, all my time was spent working and getting through backlog games. There isn't time for other things I want and NEED to do. I miss watching animé. It's been a long time since I've had time to sit down to just watch a show and relax (other than watching High Score Girl with my sister when I got back from Japan earlier this year). I couldn't help it and watched the first episode of Wataten yesterday. It's......weird to say the least, but it's filled with cuteness and humor. In terms of what I NEED to do, it's exercise. Taking the time out of the day to exercise is a lot more than one would think until you start releasing how much less time is taken out for everything else you do in the day. I did some walking every now and then this past month, but I need actual cardio.
I'm not sure what's in store or planned these next 3 months, but I'm hoping to get some work done along with all the fun that I'll (hopefully) have.
Monday, April 29, 2019
April ended too quickly
I'm actually surprised by how focused and productive I've been the past month. Much like last year, I wanted to spend the month of April reading and I wanted to make a better effort this year than I did last year. Although I've only finished 1.5 books, I did stick to the reading this month by reading 3-4 hours a day. I started with a book written by a family friend called "The Lu Family Saga". It talks about the many revolutions and wars China went through in the past century and her family's involvement in it. It was a surprisingly easy read as it was about a history I wasn't very familiar with. Right after finishing that book, I went back to continuing reading the Hellgate: London trilogy of books I bought over a decade ago. I had recently finished playing the Hellgate: London videogame for the first time and felt inclined to finish the books. I was halfway through the 2nd book before I stopped nearly 10 years ago since I last read it. I'm currently on the 3rd and last book and think I can finish it sometime next week. It was surprising to me that I remember all the characters and what happened before. Still, that's only 1.5 books I finished and I had planned to read quite a few more books.
How I managed each day this past month was reading the first half of the day and then working on practicing "mastering" audio work the last half of the day. I keep saying "I'll stop early today to play some games" everyday but never managed to do so. After learning about being able to master my audio tracks last year, I really wanted to practice and learn how to use the program to make my music sound better. So I've been going through my previous work and try to remaster each one. I haven't finished that many as two particular tracks had me going back to them for 3 weeks because I was always unsatisfied with something. I'm definitely getting better and it's making it easier to get through, but I can certainly tell I have a lot more to learn. Which, by the way, here is my remix from December:
This was the most complicated video I've created for a music upload. I experimented and learned a lot.
Because of reading and my work habits this month, I realized it's taking a bit of a toll on me. I haven't been exercising, I'm making less time for playing games, and I feel more drained. I'm hoping to balance this a bit during May. I plan on working on a new remix I have a strong idea for while taking the time to get through some more games. I feel restless with the games I'm playing and I'm in that mode where I feel like I'm playing more to complete a game rather than to have fun with it. Maybe that's true and I just need to put a bit more time into games since I really want to. I can tell my brain is looking for that stimulation as I've been staying up late at nights the past week just to play a bit more. I'd rather not ruin my sleep schedule that I've worked so hard on trying to correct. Besides that, I'd like to get back into exercising of some sort. If I don't go to the gym or go out walking, I'm hoping I can do some floor exercise mini-games while I'm playing games.
If things go according to plan, May should prove to be an entertaining and productive month.
How I managed each day this past month was reading the first half of the day and then working on practicing "mastering" audio work the last half of the day. I keep saying "I'll stop early today to play some games" everyday but never managed to do so. After learning about being able to master my audio tracks last year, I really wanted to practice and learn how to use the program to make my music sound better. So I've been going through my previous work and try to remaster each one. I haven't finished that many as two particular tracks had me going back to them for 3 weeks because I was always unsatisfied with something. I'm definitely getting better and it's making it easier to get through, but I can certainly tell I have a lot more to learn. Which, by the way, here is my remix from December:
This was the most complicated video I've created for a music upload. I experimented and learned a lot.
Because of reading and my work habits this month, I realized it's taking a bit of a toll on me. I haven't been exercising, I'm making less time for playing games, and I feel more drained. I'm hoping to balance this a bit during May. I plan on working on a new remix I have a strong idea for while taking the time to get through some more games. I feel restless with the games I'm playing and I'm in that mode where I feel like I'm playing more to complete a game rather than to have fun with it. Maybe that's true and I just need to put a bit more time into games since I really want to. I can tell my brain is looking for that stimulation as I've been staying up late at nights the past week just to play a bit more. I'd rather not ruin my sleep schedule that I've worked so hard on trying to correct. Besides that, I'd like to get back into exercising of some sort. If I don't go to the gym or go out walking, I'm hoping I can do some floor exercise mini-games while I'm playing games.
If things go according to plan, May should prove to be an entertaining and productive month.
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Readjusting
It's been almost 2 months since I've returned from Japan and I can hardly stop thinking about it. I think I've finally readjusted to being back home. I felt like I've been extremely busy the past two months and yet I also feel like I've accomplished very little. Having returned from my trip, I spent an entire month organizing the stuff I got into my room and game room, transferring photos, making a slide show, chronicling my trip, creating a scrap book, and posting a shorten summary of the trip here on this blog. It was a lot of fun retracing everything I did and remembering the moments that made the trip special, but I also felt like I spent way more time doing it than a normal person would. Maybe it felt like I wasted a lot of time doing all of that all throughout February and parts of March, but perhaps I'll be glad I did it when I revisit those memories in the future.
Aside from post-trip stuff, I contacted someone I was recommended to speak to to see if there's any connections they have with game developers or publishers that could reference me to a job. I wrote up a new resume and generalized it and had them reach out to their connections while I personally applied to the company Corsair. Afterwards, I continued working on the video for my remix I made back in December. I'm mostly finished, but would like to make a few changes before uploading it.
Besides work stuff, I've tried to really focus on some games and finish some up this past month. I was able to complete 12 of them with the big ones being Splatoon 2, Devil May Cry V, and Accel World vs. Sword Art Online. I did get a few new games this month, despite trying not to buy anymore than I can handle at the moment. I immediately played and got through Devil May Cry V, as mentioned. I picked up the physical version of Dragon: Marked for Death and got around half way through the game. I'm really enjoying it a lot and expect to play quite a few hours of it. I picked up Watch Dogs 2 when I learned from my friends that there was 4-player co-op and it was super cheap (I got it for $8.09). I haven't even played Watch Dogs 1 yet, but I installed it and hope to play it soon. Besides that, I picked up Risk of Rain 2 and Fighting EX Layer over this past weekend. Risk of Rain 2 just released for Early Access and also offered a buy 1 get 1 free copy to give to a friend. I unlocked all the characters available so far today and so I'll count it as a completed game for now because I really don't know when the game will be fully released. Fighting EX Layer was half off and also released Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury/The King of Fighters as a DLC.
That's it for now. For April, I'm hoping to get a lot of reading done, get through some light audio work in, and finish even more games than this past month.
Aside from post-trip stuff, I contacted someone I was recommended to speak to to see if there's any connections they have with game developers or publishers that could reference me to a job. I wrote up a new resume and generalized it and had them reach out to their connections while I personally applied to the company Corsair. Afterwards, I continued working on the video for my remix I made back in December. I'm mostly finished, but would like to make a few changes before uploading it.
Besides work stuff, I've tried to really focus on some games and finish some up this past month. I was able to complete 12 of them with the big ones being Splatoon 2, Devil May Cry V, and Accel World vs. Sword Art Online. I did get a few new games this month, despite trying not to buy anymore than I can handle at the moment. I immediately played and got through Devil May Cry V, as mentioned. I picked up the physical version of Dragon: Marked for Death and got around half way through the game. I'm really enjoying it a lot and expect to play quite a few hours of it. I picked up Watch Dogs 2 when I learned from my friends that there was 4-player co-op and it was super cheap (I got it for $8.09). I haven't even played Watch Dogs 1 yet, but I installed it and hope to play it soon. Besides that, I picked up Risk of Rain 2 and Fighting EX Layer over this past weekend. Risk of Rain 2 just released for Early Access and also offered a buy 1 get 1 free copy to give to a friend. I unlocked all the characters available so far today and so I'll count it as a completed game for now because I really don't know when the game will be fully released. Fighting EX Layer was half off and also released Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury/The King of Fighters as a DLC.
That's it for now. For April, I'm hoping to get a lot of reading done, get through some light audio work in, and finish even more games than this past month.
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