Well then

I'm back from the dead.

I've been really busy this December house-sitting in a house without Internet, so I haven't been on the internet all that much really. To pass some of the time, I've been playing Skies of Arcadia, Final Fantasy VIII, Knights of the Old Republic, Zelda 2, Mega Man 9 and other assorted games. I'm still without a job, but after the holidays, I'm going to try and land something. I'm not super optimistic about it, but I'll just have to smile and go on my way.

The reason that I've come to realize that I actually need a job is because there's a crapton of games coming out next year and I have to buy books not once, but twice! Seriously, books take priority, so I'm going to have to pick wisely what I actually pick up. I know I've made a list of what's coming, but I want to do it again so I can make a decision later.

♦Mass Effect 2
♦No More Heroes 2
♦Final Fantasy XIII
♦Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
♦Shirin the Wanderer Wii
♦3D-Dot Heroes
♦Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
♦Alan Wake
♦Super Mario Galaxy 2
♦Metroid Other M
♦Super Street Fighter 4
♦Glory of Heracles
♦Sakura Wars
♦Dark Void
♦White Knight Chronicles
♦Bayonetta
♦Lunar
♦Dragon Quest VI and IX possibly

...and last but not least:
♦Mega Man 10

A Look Back at Christmas Gaming: Part 1

For many people, the holiday season has always been a time to gather with friends and family to celebrate with good eats and great company. It's a time to give gifts and a time to bundle up together and realize that money does indeed buy happiness. For me, my happiness was indeed bought with good, hard, cold cash on many great games. I've decided that in celebration of the season and my childhood, I would write about the games I've received throughout the years as Christmas gifts and maybe share an anecdote or two. Most of my childhood is a blur, but I'll try and keep things in somewhat sequential order here.
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Back in 1993, Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening to the eager fans of both the Zelda series and Mr. Yokoi's wondrous little gaming device, the Gameboy. At this point in my life, I was in Kindergarten and had dominated my parent's Nintendo Entertainment System. They were pretty keen on getting me started on gaming at first and taught me the ins and outs of Super Mario Bros. and Metroid, but they wanted the TV to themselves. Luckily for them (and ultimately luckily for me), Nintendo had released a bundle that put together their fourth entry in the Zelda series with the system itself. From their recollections, they snatched it up as soon as they could find it.

It wouldn't be until the next Christmas that I would actually get the Gameboy. Up until that point, I was completely unaware that portable gaming even existed and honestly didn't have a clue what the box with the word "Zelda" on it was for. My parents actually had to take the thing out of the box and show me how to use the thing and that it was essentially a black and white(olive) version of the Nintendo. Needless to say, I wasn't the smartest 5 year-old on the block. It didn't matter though, I had Zelda.

For the next year and a half, it was my duty to explore the Koholint Island and seek out its instruments. I felt I was up to the task and quickly found myself gallivanting through caves in search of mushrooms and rescuing Chomps. There was one key roadblock that kept me from progressing through the game though, my inability to read. One puzzle in the second dungeon stumped me for the longest time, a room with a Stalfos, a Kee and a Pols Voice. I had killed them over and over and over again, but I couldn't get the key that that my compass had led me to believe lay in wait in the room. If I had been able to read, i would have known that the enemies actually had to be killed in a specific order.

Despite me being eternally stuck on this one puzzle, I did not stop playing the game. I took the Power Brace from the second dungeon and actually went around exploring for my rest of the time with the game. There were actually a lot of things to be seen in this newly opened land. I found several caves, a sealed castle and a guy in a room full of frogs. Somewhere in the back of my mind i knew all these things were connected, but I just couldn't figure it out with my rudimentary grasp of letters.

I'm sure I would have eventually figured out how to solve the puzzle, but unfortunately the game would be lost a year later after several trips, including one to Brazil. I didn't lose the game on any of these trips however, I lost it to a couch. After spending the night at my older cousin's house with a friend, we had decided to go out on his balcony and throw water balloons. Not wanting to risk ruining my beloved Gameboy and accompanying games, i set them down on the couch next to the door. When we came back in, my games were gone. I still don't know where they went, but me and my cousin tore that couch apart looking for them.

(As a side note, in an effort to find out exactly when this bundle was released, I used the almighty Google to search. I didn't find any hard numbers nor very many pictures, but the one I did find was on eBay. It would seem that brand new, the bundle sells for around two and half grand. Stupid couch!)

BusterLogic may or may not be moving

Due to the general lack of views I've been receiving on Blogspot, I've been toying around with moving the blog over to 1up. Let's be honest, my primary goals in having this blog was to not only build up a portfolio, but to get criticisms about the direction I take things and my writing ability and style itself; I'm just not getting that here.

For the time being, I'll be posting my blogs here and at 1up.com. We'll see how things go, but i may be saying goodbye to the blogspot eventually.

A Slow December?

I find myself hearing through the dregs of the Internet about how all the great games have already come out and that there aren't any more good games coming out this year. We still have a month guys, and I'm sure there will be at least a couple decent games coming. Let me break it down for you:

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks



This game is looking to be just about what Phantom Hourglass should have been. Hourglass was an attempt to create a new way to play a Zelda game and it succeeded at doing just that. The game worked very well and had plenty of great ideas going for it. The problem with it was that it simply didn't have the dungeon design nor the boss battles that make the games memorable. I played through most of Hourglass and I can't remember much of it at all.

Spirit Tracks looks interesting. I'm hoping controlling Phantom-Zelda will be a delicate experience, because from what I've been lead to believe so far, it's looking good. The dungeons seem to be a cut above the dreck that we were subjected to with the last game.


Silent Hill: Shattered Memories



I think I've talked about what makes me interested in this game so far before. In short, no combat for the first time in a series where the combat has always felt stale. The emphasis will actually be on fear and discovery as opposed to beating the hell out of two torsos sewn together. The producer has also been claiming that its going to have a system that learns what scares you or some such jargon, but I find myself skeptical. Despite my disbelief, I can't help but find myself entranced by the idea of playing a survival horror game that doesn't have asinine controls or combat.


The Saboteur



I'll be real honest here guys, I've never played a Pandemic Studios game nor did I know of this game's existence until it was revealed that the majority of the studio had been canned. What I do know of the company is that Mercs was hot and Mercs 2 was undercooked despite its ridiculously awesome commercial. What I do know of The Saboteur is that it looks freaking rad. The game takes place during World War II but from all that I've seen from screenshots, it is NOT an FPS. Plus the concept of being in a black and white world slowly getting infused with color has always been sweet in my book.

I must admit I feel kind of silly talking about a game I know little to nothing about, but it at least reminded me about the best video game commercial ever.


Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers



Having a release date of December 26th gives me the impression that this game has been sent out to die. I've never really been a fan of the Crystal Chronicles games really, but its ESRB summary and some gameplay previews kind of make me want to give it another look. Instead of trying to convince people to give this game a look, let me just quote its ESRB warning:

"This is a fantasy-based action game in which players assume the role of Layle, a mercenary "crystal bearer" who uses his telekinetic powers (i.e., the ability to control gravity) to stop an evil villain from destroying the world. Players can explore fantasy worlds, battle numerous creatures, and engage in story-related mini-games (e.g., dodging lasers, flying airships, saving people). The central character can use his telekinetic powers to throw people off cliffs, into warp portals, onto train tracks, or into trash chutes. Guns and swords can also be used to defeat characters. One sequence involves intense machine gun fire against a dragon; cutscenes sometimes depict slapping, punching, and kicking. Consumers may wish to know that the expletives "damn" and "hell" are occasionally used by the central characters.

Some female characters wear revealing fantasy outfits and bikinis that expose deep cleavage. During one sequence at the beach, a woman accuses a man of peeping on her in an outhouse changing room (e.g., "How icky of you to watch girls changing!" and "You were peeping?!"). In one mini-game, two women in bikinis try to knock each other off a floating platform using only their hips. Players will also encounter multiple alcohol references during their adventure: wine casks, barrels, and bottles (e.g., "Rainbow Wine") can be found in some locations; a goblin samurai holding a sake-shaped bottle appears to be drunk; and players can visit a winery and uncork kegs and barrels, allowing the wine to pour onto the floor. If players wish to, they may pick up steaming manure and toss it at enemies or the bucolic surroundings."

How anyone could NOT want to play this game after reading that is a little bit beyond me.


And that's about it, I can't think of any other games worthy of note. This may or may not be my Monday post; if it is, sorry guys.

Next Year is Looking Sharp

Every year, I tend to think back on what MY game of the year was. Last year it was Persona 4 and the year before that it was Super Mario Galaxy. This year I'm having a hard time deciding. In all honesty, I haven't played many of the A+ games that have been released. If I had to choose out of the five or six new games I purchased, I'd probably have a tie between Retro Game Challenge and Street Fighter 4.

Next year I actually have a lot of anticipated games coming out. Last night, I tried to think about all the games that I KNOW I'm going to get. I'm going to be lazy and just diamond point them without boring any possible reader with my awful writing. Here it goes:

♦ Mass Effect 2
♦ Super Mario Galaxy 2
♦ No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle
♦ Shiren the Wanderer
♦ Final Fantasy XIII
♦ Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
♦ Final Fantasy Gaiden: Four Warriors of Light (if it comes to the US at all)
♦ Dragon Quest VI
♦ Dragon Quest IX
♦ Alan Wake
♦ 3D Dot Heroes
♦ Metroid: Other M (if it stays on track for a 2010 release)
♦ Super Street Fighter 4

So those are all high(ish) profile releases that I have little to no doubt of their quality. These are just games that come to the top of my head; I'm sure there's far more than that coming that will surprise me.

Mario's Keytastrophe

Not really a whole lot planned out for today. To be honest, I forgot that today was Wednesday (Update Day). I'm currently taking a short break from Suikoden II to play through Final Fantasy Mystic Quest to see if it is as bad as people like to claim. I've only played through the first hour or so of the game so far, but it's not the abortion that most Gamefaqs reviews would have you believe.

But this post isn't about Mystic Quest nor is it about abortions. I'm here to talk about something a little near and dear to my heart. Today, I'm going to spout off about one of the best ROM hacks I've played, Mario's Keytastrophe. The point of the game is to go into each level, find the key and take it to the key hole. Essentially, it's sort of like the concept to the Gameboy's Donkey Kong 94, but executed in the Super Mario World engine. It's great fun and it isn't overly difficult. In fact, I'd say as a whole, it eases into it's difficulty not only better than all other competing ROM hacks, but I'd even go as far to say that it has a better difficulty curve Super Mario World itself.

You can find the IPS file here, but you're on your own when it comes to the ROM. Remember kids, piracy is bad.

Five of the most memorable SNES RPG opening scenes

When one starts an RPG, a good hook is often needed to insure that the gamer will be whisked away to a world they never would have seen otherwise. A lot of games fail at that either for being too slow to start or having just a slice of life type introduction. Some games, however, manage to get the action going just right and set a good tone and precedent to build a game on. Here are five of my favorites. Most of these were recorded and edited by myself, but that was because I couldn't find anything else that suited my needs. Thanks to GeneralGrim909 for posting the Super Mario RPG video.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars



When Super Mario RPG was first announced, I wasn't sure what to make of it. I had heard the acronym used by my uncle when ever I would watch him play some first person PC game (I sure wish one of us remembered the name of), but this game was looked like nothing I had ever seen at that point. Remember kids, I was only about seven years old at the time, so most RPG's kinda slipped right out of my gaming curve due to an inability to read at a competent level.

Anyways, this beginning starts out pretty much with the beginning of any Mario game: Princess gets kidnapped and it's up to Mario to have a journey through the Mushroom Kingdom to save her. What really got me about it back in the day was how it illustrated Bowser's keep for the first time in a Mario game at that point. I'm not sure what about that really captured me, but whatevs. Anyways, in the first five minutes, you have your climatic showdown with the antagonistic turtle-dragon and actually have to use an outside tool to defeat him, staying consistent with the reptile's defeat in all the previous games. Once you finally get your Princess, chaos is unleashed and a giant sword pierces the castle and causes Mario to be separated from his platonic love.

Final Fantasy III



Back when I first played Final Fantasy VI, emulation was in its infancy and the sound quality was horrendous. It didn't matter though, there was something special about the way this game started that really got me hooked. Still to this day, I often get cold chills running down my spine when I go through it.

The air of mystery is thick as you're introduced to a world where magic was lost and technology had improved. So much so, did it that the first three characters you're introduced to walk around in metal suits. They presented something hadn't seen at the time in RPGs, a steam punk setting. As you're assaulted trying to enter the town of Narshe and go into their mines, you begin to wonder why exactly it is that the guards are so hostile. They even use beasts like Lobos to try and rend you asunder and eventually send a lightning eating mollusk after you. Once you get past the Whelk, you find out exactly why you and your buddies are there. The frozen Esper is approached and you find yourself outgunned as it disintegrates both of your new found "friends". "What could happen to ?????" with an intro like this, it's no wonder the game is one of the most beloved in the franchise


Dragon Quest VI



Dragon Quest VI is one of the long lost RPGs that never made it to America back in the nineties. Enix had to close down shop due to the poor sales and receptions of games like Brain Lord and Robotrek, so unfortunately, we missed out on one of the best RPGs of the Super Famicom. Interestingly enough, for once, Europe didn't get the shaft. They actually got one more Enix release called Terranigma, the vastly superior sequel to Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia.

Dragon Quest VI opens up on a dark night around a camp fire. You find yourself laying on the ground with a female companion awaiting your scout who's job it was to find out whether or not you were in the right place. When he returns, he confirms, that 'Yes' this is the dark lord Mudo's castle. With that bit of assurance, you and your compatriots gallivant your way over to the cliff where the female companion summons a dragon to fly you to your destination. What comes next is one of the most exciting scenes of the era as you and your crew fly into the castle in a way that wouldn't look out of place in a high tier fantasy movie. Once your party arrives, you find yourself in a deep, dank castle with a choking sense of foreboding subtly slithering into your psyche. As you go on, you see clouds shaped like skulls and a rainbow haze to attempt to warn you. You'll have none of that and you march on anyways into the lair of Mudo. Once there, you and your friends are lifted into the air by Mudo and one by one you are destroyed. Not many games start in your own death.



Lufia & The Fortress of Doom



When I think back of Lufia, I can't help but hail it as "The Most SNES RPG Ever". It takes every que from all it's competitors and matches them. It's a mish mash of everything else that was being done, yet somehow, it broke away and became completely awesome in it's own right. I still think the intro is the most interesting part and apparently I'm not the only one: Lufia II is the prequel and actually retells the events that led up to the intro to the First game.

In the sky, a floating island sits with an intimidating eeriness to it. In the castle that sits at the very top resides four malicious, dark entities called the Sinistrals who threaten the very life of the planet. We're first introduced to Maxim, Selan, Artea and Guy as they climb through this evil castle and battle their way through the monsters that live within. As they reach the heart of the fortress, they fight the Sinistrals one by one until all four are defeated. In one final desperation attack, the Sinistrals unleash the last of their power, so strong that it could it the world that very moment. With a counter formed between them and fueled by Selan, they deflect the Sinistrals' attack and save the world. Their victory came at a cost however, Selan was mortally wounded and Maxim was separated from the rest of the party, unable to escape. Lufia essentially starts out with what could have been (and eventually was) the end of an RPG. As such, it's unformulaic attempt to separate it from it's peers succeeded..



Final Fantasy IV



I've talked plenty about this game through the blog, so I won't waste too much time on this one. After a raid on the capital of Mysidia, the leader of the Red Wings naval force, Cecil, reflects somberly on the events that preceded. His crew calls out their callous actions, but Cecil states that it was necessary to protect the Kingdom of Baron. As they fly through the sky, they are attacked by monsters and are single handedly defeated by the captain. Upon landing, Cecil is greeted by the royal guard Baigan and is brought to the throne room. Once Cecil passes off their spoils of war, he can't help but question the purpose of their raid and how it has negatively impacted his crew. For his insolence, Cecil is relieved of his command and sent on a mission to slay a phantom beast in the town of Mist. Cecil's friend Kain bursts through the room and tries to persuade the king to give Cecil another chance, but only succeeds in getting himself sent on the mission as well.

The Problems With Suikoden II !!!!!!!!

By all accountable means, Suikoden II could have been the single best RPG on the Playstation. It's a great game, but quite a few marring little details seemed to have been an oversight of massive proportions. I'm talking about the translation and the massive amount of ridiculous glitches in the game.

♦ To say writing is important in an RPG is kind of an understatement. Suiko II has some pretty poor text contained within it. From characters saying things that make no sense to the over use of the exclamation mark, they definitely didn't have a competent localization crew. Not all of the awful text offends me however, talking to a cat and hearing him say "grumble, grumble" is pretty hilarious.

♦ The Langrisser styled wars are a definite step down from the Rock, Paper, Scissors wars of the first game. I'm not going to be brazen enough to claim the RPS segments were perfect, but they were not only much simpler, but had a greater impact on the playthrough. The major problems for me are simple: It's incredibly slow, most battles have a fixed ending, the lack of explanation on setting up the party entourages, and lastly, the worst offender is that the music almost NEVER loads. I've gotten to my eighth tactical battle in the game and I've only heard the music TWICE. I'm not sure what the problem is exactly, but I'm sort of lead to believe that the game just can't find the music.

♦ The glitches in the game completely kill the any difficulty the game could have had. There's two specific glitches I'm referring to. The first one is the least likely to occur, but still possible to do on accident. If you fight certain groups of enemies with one character left standing at either level 39 or 40 (dependent on the enemy group), their level will shoot up to 99 by the end of the battle. The one that makes me the most furious however, is the glitch that random stars of destiny will join your party already at level 99.

♦ If you import your data from Suiko I, you get exp bonuses to returning characters and get to recruit the main character from the first game. The problem with this however is that they completely neglected to fix Tir McDohl's name. Suiko II defaults his name to McDohl, but when you import your data, it attempts to use the first name you made up instead. Instead of the name changing to what you chose, only the capital letters will change, so for me, his name is now TcDohl instead of Tir.


(I was going to do my five favorite SNES RPG openings today, but it turns out there isn't a lot of stock footage on Youtube the way I want to use it. I'm going to have to play through most of the openings myself and record it. That combined with the fact that my internet was down until about an hour ago made me decide I would be better off postponing it to next week.)

An Update About Updates

In order to kick the blog in gear, I've decided that I'm going to update Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week in order to keep this baby going. The updates are going to be somewhat longish, roughly 500 words give or take. Today's was on the announcement of No More Heroes' Paradise and I'm planning on doing one about my five favorite openings to SNES RPGs probably about on Friday.

I'm hoping some consistency will be good for the blog, if not just for my sanity.

Some More Heroes

Earlier last year, I picked up a few games that I had missed out on such as Okami, Shadow Hearts Covenant and No More Heroes. I haven't played very much of the two former, but Suda 51's game enthralled me and took me on a ride that didn't end until after I had beaten the game on the first two difficulty settings. No More Heroes managed to not only be an awesome Wii game, but it brought me back to a simpler time when a good game consisted of beating up thousands of dead ringers whilst getting through a stage. It brought me everything I loved in early beat em ups like Final Fight or Streets of Rage and married it perfectly with a ridiculous story and some of the most engaging boss fights ever.

The art design of the game was one of the things that I remember best about it. Heavy use of shading mixed with highly stylized character designs meshed well together and ended up being palletable. Travis Touchdown was probably my favorite character just because he was incredibly shallow, yet strong willed in an era where the average protagonist in a Japanese game is going through an existential crisis every five minutes.

The only thing that I disliked about the game was (like everyone else who played it) the "open world" gameplay. That's the only term that really applies to it, but there isn't a damn thing to do in Santa Destroy aside from minigames and shopping. I wish they would have just provided the jobs and the stores in the same fashion they do everything in your apartment, just a menu to select from.


Fast forward about a year and a half and we have No More Heroes' Paradise announced for both Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. I kind of think it's a little silly to be rereleasing it on a higher res console as the stylized graphics hid a lot of the visual problems, but I'm hoping that it will get more gamers into playing what would have been my game of the year last year if it wasn't for Persona 4. Supposedly, they're cutting out the motion controls in favor of button pressings, so I guess that's another plus. Anyways, I'm looking forward to playing it a third time, if for nothing other than Very Sweet Mode.

I played through New Super Mario Bros. Wii

My little cousins picked it up yesterday and "offered to babysit them". It's such a good game, but unfortunately, they only had one Wii remote, so I was stuck playing single player after they went to be. I played from like 9PM until 3AM. If that isn't a sign of quality, I don't know what is.

I'm also sick as a dog and I typed a ten page essay today for History, so I'm going to cut this blog post off right here.

I lost both auctions

I was pretty glad that I got outbid on Suikoden 2 as I really can't spend that kind of money right now. What I'm sort of miffed about is the fact that I lost the far better deal on the last second by a dollar. I kind of made some poor decisions afterwards though, as I purchased Suiko 4 for ten bucks. I also placed a bid on Suiko 3 for $20 and Suiko 5 for $30.

Man, I'm an idiot

L i t t l e M o n e y

Like many other gamers, I'm kind of sad that I'm missing out on a lot of games. I'm going to probably get a game from my parents for Christmas (godbless them). Aside from that, I'm not going to be playing these games for quite a while. I figured I'd waste a blog post on what I'd like to be playing within the next few months.

Batman: Arkham Asylum


I've always been a fan of Batman, but there really haven't been many games that are worth my time. Arkham Asylum seems to be universally lauded, so I've found myself colored curious. From what I've heard, it's been described as Metal Gear meets the Batman license. That is a very good thing for me. Zippo!

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

I probably don't need to talk about why I'm interested in this. The first Tomb Raider was a fun game and Uncharted 2 looks like it captures the same spirit of exploration and combat. Yeah!

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories


I canceled my preorder today due to my stupidity with eBay. I still really want it, but I just can't afford it at the moment. The lack of combat seems really cool, since that's usually the one thing that turns me off of Silent Hill and other "good" survival horror games. Neato!

Dragon Age Origins


The way that EA marketed Dragon Age really turned me off of the idea that it had the possibility of being a decent game. Now that I've actually seen some gameplay, I'm actually kind of excited about it again and hope that it'll live up to that excitement. If I have to choose however, I'll probably pick up Mass Effect 2 over this. I've already been sold into that world and Dragon Age seems kinda like a great game in a generic game's coating. Fantastic!

New Super Mario Bros Wii


This game looks fun and I love me some Mario. Self Explanatory!

I'm trying to buy Suikoden II, III, IV and V

I have a serious problem when it comes to deals. When I see something for a ridiculously good price, I just can't help myself. Today was one of those occasions. I went on eBay to see exactly how much Unlimited SaGa was selling for and somehow I've placed almost a hundred dollars on the Suiko series. The first auction is for Suikoden II for a measly $50. I honestly think that's a bit high for my tastes, but the game usually sells for around $200 used. Hell, I also saw one for nearly a grand. I'm playing it illigitimately right now, but damned is it not worth a month's rent.

By far the better deal however is this deal on Suiko III, IV and V for $35 dollars. This one for sure I'm going to snatch up if I can. These games usually go for about $30 a piece as it is, so I'm saving about 66% by purchasing this.

I'm kind of broke right now, so a part of me hopes I lose these (besides Suiko II which I know I'll lose). If I end up winning these, they may end up being my parent's Christmas present to me.

You know what's fun?

I think I'm going to demo out a Let's Play here on the blog or make another blog for it. I really want to do Final Fantasy V and I think I have the knowledge to do so. If I end up going past my little test here, I'm going to start over on an actual forum (not Something Awful, for the love of god) where it might actually get read. Stay tuned guys, we're in for a bumpy ride.

Here it is guys, the first of the Final Fantasy V LP's

Defeating Dracula

Despite the fact that I claimed the oldschool styled Castlevania games the best yesterday, I hadn't actually beaten any of them until today when I finished Rondo of Blood. For those that haven't played the game, the final battle is the exact same boss fight as the first battle in Symphony of the Night. Even though it's nearly identical, it is actually quite a bit harder than Symphony had led me to believe. There's two key differences in this fight that makes it leaps and bounds more difficult than it's representation in the sequel. For starters, if you do poorly, Maria doesn't come and save your ass and make you near invincible. For second, you don't have the nifty dash ability that Symphony gave Richter. This essentially makes dodging Dracula's second form a lot more menacing.

After about three gameovers and several different methods of trying to take him down, he managed to die like a monster that didn't belong in this world. I only had the smallest sliver of health possible when I did it; INTENSITY!

(By the way, I totally jacked the image above from VGMuseum where they have this neat little article on Mr.Tepes' lair. Check that out mang, ya deserve it!)

Are the Later Suikoden Games Worth it?

One of the things I did in my little break from Blogging was playthrough the first Suikoden. I bought it Christmas day last year on PSN and didn't really see what so many people seemed to see in it. From the brief ten minute session I gave the game, the one thing that really stood out to me was the budget(and it's nonexistence). I promptly

Flashforward to about a week and half ago when for whatever reason I decided to give it another shot. For some reason, this time around I wasn't put off by how cheap the game felt. I was actually blown away to play an RPG that moved as fast as it had (I got frustrated with Chrono Trigger because the battles were too slow). Suikoden is brisk in it's battles, load times, and it's pace. This is actually the first game since probably Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne that I actually got everything in.

Right now, I'm playing Suikoden II on my PSP and I'm enjoying it as well. They definitely had a bigger budget this time around. The game is absolutely stunning in both it's scenery and it's music. My only quip would be that the pace is slightly slower than the first game.

After I get finished though, I'm not sure if I'm going to play the rest of the Suikoden games. No one can really give a definite answer on which games are worth it. I've actually seen people on all three sides when it comes to the PS2 era games. Tierkries got pretty good ratings, but from what I've heard, it really doesn't have any of the charm of the series. I can only afford so much right now, and last time I checked, these games cost more than $6 and zippo(though I'd gladly fork over the money for Suiko II on PSN). If anyone is willing to give some opinions, leave a comment. If not, I'll surely cry.

(If it wasn't for the fact that I really love the game, this probably just would have been another Horrible boxart post.)

A Brilliant and Bloody Return

I took about three weeks off of writing for reasons that I may or may not have made clear in past blogs. To hurt things even more, I'm really crunching in school right now and my bank is drying up. In short, my time is getting mauled all kinds.

But this isn't just another post of me whining about life--on the contrary in fact-- I've returned to the bloggosphere and picked the BusterLogic mantle off the ground. I have a couple things I'd like to talk about, but brevity is something I'd like maintain in my writing.

Let's start with Castlevania The Adventure ReBirth. I skipped out on both Gradius and Contra ReBirth, but from what I've read, the general concensus seems to be that they're very midlane. To be honest, I've always been awful at Contra and Gradius, so I didn't really care to try them out in any way shape or form. Castlevania on the other hand is something that I have a deep and undying love for.

I started with Super Castlevania IV and actually kind of hated it to the point where I wouldn't try another Castlevania until the release of Aria of Sorrow. Being the Metroid fanboy that I am, I was frowthing at the mouth for more after I played it. I went and played Symphony of the Night and Dawn of Sorrow and loved them even more. Castlevania was here to stay in my heart. Eventually I got curious enough to find out that Super Castlevania IV didn't suck, I was just a stupid kid. Revalations!

I really love the oldschool Castlevania feel, even more so than the Metroidvania entries interestingly enough. When I heard that the gameboy games were getting a ReBirth, I already decided in my mind that it would be a classic. I guess that shows that I've become a Castlevania fanboy then as it seems most other fans are kind of wary of it. I have one bit of insurance though, the videos that popped up of the complete game. I've only seen stage 1 and 3, but it looks damned fine and even has two of my favorite tracks from the series. I'm really looking forward to it and I think you should to. It's guaranteed to be atleast mediocre and a mediocre Castlevania is still leagues better than 8 Eye's.

Remember When I Said I'd Be Posting More?

Yeah, that didn't really happen much, did it?

Truth is that I really don't know how I want to approach this whole weblog thing. When I first became somewhat unhappy with the way it was going, I decided to broaden the scope a bit by including stuff from my school experience and me trying to get into the field. Now that I've given that a little time to sink into my head, I can't help but look at that in disgust - it's freaking terrible. So I apologize to the occasional reader I get for such a stupid idea.

I want to take this blog in a better direction, and eventually, I think want BusterLogic to turn into a website of some sort. Lately, I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with a better way to be more cohesive in my writings rather than just meander about writing an article here and a memory there. I want something where if a reader who comes for my take on a news article doesn't get fed up and stop reading because I feel like talking about Super Metroid for a week.

I'm not going to lie, I don't have any friends where I'm at currently. BusterLogic is a one person work. I'm hoping somewhere along the way I can get other people to contribute something and eventually help me build everything up. My dream for this whole BusterLogic cloud is to eventually get to the position where I can get a podcast going and get some people talking.

That's all for this post. I'm going to probably write something after this just to get something going, but I've learned my lesson from the colossal post I made after my previous status update. I'll just end it with this: I'm not happy with BusterLogic as it stands, but I want to see it wax into something much more grandiose.

Okay, So There's This Space Commander...

Alright, So I beat Mass Effect for the first time after owning it for like two years. I just thought I'd do kinda like I did when I beat Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. For those just tuning in, I'm going to use bullet points(well, more like diamond points) to give just a few thoughts. Maybe spoilers ahead, but then again, anyone interested in Mass Effect would have beaten it two years ago.

♦ The Mako was freaking awful for the most part. I originally thought the lack of an acceleration button being what made it so bad, but I'm beginning to think that isn't why. The thought comes to mind that thing simply was just a superfluous addition to the overall game.

♦ I really don't like how they set up the achievements. I only ended up with about 430 points, mostly because I chose the Paragon route and chose the infiltrator class. I can understand how they set it up so you play the game one way the first time and then the opposite the next, but in the end, I think there simply isn't enough game to facilitate the level 50 and 60 achievements. By the time I finished the game, I had completed almost all the sidequests and after defeating the final boss, I was only level 41.

♦ I really liked how they (spoiler warning) made it necessary to sacrifice some of your characters for plot related reasons. I liked the whole angle they took with Wrex (although I chose to save him, since he's a gun-toting dinosaur). When it came time to sacrifice one of the human characters, I really wanted to kill off Ashley. In fact, I did plan on killing her off, but I kept dying afterwards and had to reload a save before the moment of the decision. I got tired of hearing the dialogue after the first time and started skipping and without noticing, I had chosen to sacrifice Kaiden. I really don't like Ashley, but I really didn't want to play that segment again.

♦ I really liked how they handled the final boss. There was a legitimately difficult battle to be had there without relying on backup infantry.

♦ Having an item limit of 150 really, really sucks

♦ I didn't discover that I could upgrade more than one slot on my equipment. I feel dumb after finding it out on the very last area of the game.

Of Course Demons Own Multiple Souls

After about what must have been three days of grueling heat in a UPS truck, my copy of Demon's Souls arrived at my doorstep. I say this because when I went to smell the printed goods that came along side it (like any red blooded American would) , the only thing to waft into my nostrils could only be described as pure hotness.

This was another one of those games that would go along well with that swag post I made a few weeks back, this thing was loaded with some goodies. The main difference between this and something like the Persona 4 box is basically it's usefulness. The deluxe version comes with a 159 page strategy guide filled with a full set of colors. It's pretty nice too, it has a bestiary, lists of equipment, a normal walkthrough and a guide to a perfect run.

I think the thing that got me interested in the game was it's emphasis on death. From the get go, they made it a major point to tell you that you will die A LOT. Lot's of people seem to believe that there's going to be a mass rush of people complaining that the death mechanic makes it too difficult, but I believe otherwise. It's true that death comes quick to those unprepared to face their challenges, but never once are the enemies unfair. When you die, it's very much like dying in a roguelike; it's your own damned fault. While I've died at least fifteen times in the two hours I spent with the game today, I never found myself angry at bad play control or overpowered enemies. The games take on health ranges somewhere between realistic and something like in a survival horror game. Of course getting hit with a sword a few times is going to kill you, it's a sword. I actually think this is one of the strongest suits of the game, coming to terms with your own mortality. You aren't playing the role of some larger than life epic hero a kin to Beowulf, but an average person who tends to die after being bludgeoned a few times.

I like the game, but I'm probably going to be putting it on the backburner for a few weeks. Mass Effect needs to be completed before I'm willing to give another game a whole lot of time.

What I've Been Playing

To make up for a lack of posts for the last week or so, I figured I would do brief write ups of my game experiences for each one.


Mass Effect


As I posted earlier last week, I'd been wanting to play Mass Effect again. After popping the disc back in, I realized exactly why I had stopped the previous attempt to romp through.

On the first mission after Shepard becomes a Spectre, you have to drive around on a molten world with nasties shooting you up from all sides. Now, your vehicle, the Mako, controls about as smoothly as a plane with one wing. This thing is just plain not fun to drive. All the movement is focused on the left analog stick. The problem with this is that acceleration is also controlled with that stick, making forward movement the only quick and viable course of action. This makes the combat scenarios a little more diffcult than they need to be. They really needed to add an acceleration button to the mix.

The way I see it, they could have done this several ways. Firstly, they could pull a Grand Theft Auto and mount it to the left and right triggers. The problem with that would simply be the minigun on the Mako which is used with the right trigger. I think the best solution would simply be to cut out the repair option all together, map jump to the Y button and accelerate to the A. My line of thinking suggests that if you can CONTROL AND MOVE at the same time, you should be getting hit less, making the repair option superfluous to begin with.

The lava on the planet was also a huge issue for me, I died about five times due to the instant death from simply touching the stuff. The terrain is rugged and the Mako has a way of getting bounced around whether or not you intend for that to happen. This makes driving along the edges of cliffs incredibly dangerous and jumping moreso. I don't really understand why they wanted the Mako to be able to jump around if they're going to make it so easy for you to die doing so. I also found some texturing problems with the lava as well. There were a few times I got the lava death just driving around on the normal terrain. I think either they accidentally placed the lava there or they just plain forgot to add the BRIGHT RED BURNING LAVA texture to it. Either way, I wasn't too happy with it.

Aside from my quips and complaints about this world, my experience afterwards was fantastic. BioWare truly crafted one of the most believable(if a little sterile) universes I've seen in gaming. Each race has a backstory, different traits and grudges. Each character has atleast something interesting about them, whether it's Wrex's dark past or Ashley's racism. The planets are beautiful and planet Noveria has got to be the best frigid homeworld I've seen in a game. It's hard to say why exactly I think it's so good, I guess that's because being negative is just so much more fun. I'm almost done with the main game, so I'm going to be taking a break from the plot and explore some planets and do some side missions. I still just want to shoot stuff.


Shin Megami Tensei: Persona


I was originally planning on writing an article on the five reasons why Persona PSP redeems the Revelations version. I got about halfway through it when I found out someone already beat me to the punch. This kind of broke my will to talk about anything for a while, but after about a weeks time, I'm feeling up to fawning over this gem again.

I played Revelations for about five hours earlier this year and decided to stop after hearing about the PSP remake. I found the game overall to be quite fun and pretty charming but I couldn't get over some of the issues.

The game doesn't really tell you what a lot of things do. It gives you all kinds of different weapons, guns and spells with different ranges of attack, but doesn't in the least try and tell you what hits where. This makes arranging your party a lot trickier unless you're looking at a guide or something.

There was also the horrid world map. It's really hard to show you exactly how bad it was without displaying the thing in motion. The town was kind of set up like a normal town with sidewalks you could walk on. The problem was that the point of view made it really hard to see where you were going. It was almost a behind the back perspective in a game that really needed an overhead view just to see the lay of the land. The game gave you a map to help you traverse the town, but the problem was that it rotated with you, making things really confusing if you weren't paying attention to each and every turn you made.

I also had a problem with moving around in the third person rooms. These rooms are from an isometric viewpoint, which isn't that bad except that the buttons are mapped the opposite of every other isometric game. If you press the UP button, you walk northwest instead of northeast like all most other games sharing the perspective.

The localization was another common issue with the the thing. There were several grammatical issues like the word "your" being used for "you're". I see enough of that on the Internet, I really don't need to play games that are going to pick at my pet peeve too. That doesn't seem to be most people's problem though. Most of the complaints I see are that they Americanized a game that is very much a game highly centered in Japan. They also turned Masao Inaba into a black teenager in the Revelations version. I honestly don't see a problem with the change. Yeah, it wasn't necessary, but they could have tried to make him speak Ebonics. It could have been much worse. Possibly the biggest crime in the haphazard localization was the fact that they cut a rather sizable side quest completely out of the game. Side quest is probably a little misleading, the Snow Queens Quest was essentially a whole new storyline and set of dungeons to explore on another playthrough. I often see it referred to as the other half of the game.

So anyways, when I heard that they were fixing all those problems with PSP port, I immediately stopped playing Revelations and waited for it to hit the shelves. I even purchased a new PSP because I didn't feel like bungling around with my broken custom firmware enabled PSP. Now that I have the game and have spent about ten hours with it, i could sing praises about it all day. They brought the game over exactly as it was in Japan. The only change in the dialogue was that the game was in English rather than Japanese. Getting used to the characters real names was kind of hard at first; i still find myself calling Nanjo 'Nate'. The menues and text are much higher res, making it really pretty to look at and it looks like the sprites were cleaned up a bit. The world map is now a whole lot more similar to Shin Megami Tensei II rather than the complete mess it was originally. My favorite fix was the fact that they show exactly what attack or spell is going to hit which parts of the battle map. This makes arranging your party so much easier compared to the original. Before I didn't even bother moving my characters around and just sucked it up, but now I find myself changing it up a lot more.

Oh yeah, the game is about 66% faster as well. That's nice.


The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time


I started playing this game again earlier because I had to babysit. Having the kids watch me play games has always been my favorite method of child watch since I first started doing it. How could it not be, I get to play games, they get to be entertained. It's a win win really.

Ocarina of Time is probably my favorite of the Zelda series, but I don't necessarily think it's the best. The reason why I think Ocarina is my fave is pretty much based on the atmosphere of the game. You don't really get much of the oppressive nature of it until the Forest Temple, but when you get there, man is it creepy. I think it's one of the very few instances where hardware limitations actually helped the game out. The "Fog of War" as they used to call it gave each temple a mysterious feeling and that coupled with the music really emphasized the general idea of each dungeon. The forest temple had a haunted Celtic feel to it, the fire temple had a musky, torturous feel that was greatly heightened by the Islamic chanting. The Shadow Temple felt very much like a tomb. The three 3D Zelda games to come afterwards didn't meet the same success in my opinion when it came to the ambiance.

Today, I started from the beginning of the game and stopped right after the fight with the King Dodongo. One thing that I really liked about Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask is how they present each bosses name. There's something really cool about seeing "Infernal Dinosaur: King Dodongo".

(For those who are curious, my favorite 2D Zelda is A Link to the Past and I think Wind Waker is Objectively the best.)


Scribblenauts


Scribblenauts seems to have had an interesting backlash to it since it's come out. I think that it was hyped to no end and just like every other game with the same problem, any flaw found would be it's death knell. For Scribblenauts, that tragic flaw would be the pseudo protagonist, Maxwell, and how you control him. The main problem is simple, due to the touch screen based movement, one false touch and Maxwell will run jauntily. It doesn't matter if there's an inferno or a Robosaur in the way, if the game thinks wanted Maxwell to run there, then by god, Maxwell will run there. Personally, I think gamers today don't have any patience when it comes to quick and easy deaths. The way a Scribblenauts stage is set up is so that the vast majority can be completed in a minute. I think people really overlook that when they complain about the "leap before looking" issue. While false deaths happen here and there, sometimes more than you would like, you only lose about 30 seconds worth of time. God forbid some of these players play something like I Wanna Be The Guy.

I'm having a lot of fun with the game myself. Yeah, there are problems here and there. Most of my issues are that things don't react as they should to their environment. If I put a tree on a slope, it should stick in the ground, not go tumbling down the hill. Aside from that, the vast majority of things I find in the game surprises me. I was shocked to find out that there were several memes in the game like Longcat or Weegee. The Pterodactyl and the rope have been my best friends when it comes to moving things around. I know I should probably try and be more clever, but like some gamers don't have a patience for dying, I don't have patience for stupid difficult puzzles.


Bionic Commando


I'm not going to lie here, I didn't discover how much I really loved Bionic Commando until this year. Hell, I couldn't even say that I liked it back in the day. My awareness of the game came from Hitler no Fukkatsu: Top Secret after I found it in a file filled with NES roms. I was blown away by how blatant the game was with the whole Nazi thing. Eventually, I found out the game was released without the national socialist links as Bionic Commando. I really didn't like the game at all. The lack of the jump button frustrated me to no ends. The grappling mechanic also seemed far to rigid and imprecise for it to be useful to me. At the end of the day, I figured that it was just a bad game made by terrible people and left it that way in my memory for years.

It was the rantings and ravings of Jeremy Parish of Retronauts that finally made me give the game the time of day. I decided to play it safe and download the Rearmed version on Xboxlive and I found that I still hated the game. This time would be different though, I figured that if Parish loved it so much, there was obviously something I wasn't seeing. It took me an hours worth of attempts to finish the first level and the boss and by the time I had vanquished the Pipipi robot, I was hooked.

Later on that same day, I drove about ten minutes from my house to my local retro video game store and picked up the original game and decided to work my way through that before going further in Rearmed. There was a little bit of discrepancy in my newly gained skills from the revamp, but after about a half an hour I had learned the grappling mechanic well. It took me several hours and quite a few gameovers before I actually took down the Albatros and made Master D's head explod.

I played through the game every day for a period of about two weeks and enjoyed the game just as much every time. To me, Bionic Commando is like a good action movie. It's super short, but it's just so fulfilling that I can't help but go back and shoot some Badds.

I've been playing it on my DS via flashcard whenever I'm somewhere I don't really want to be. Sometimes when I'm forced to watch a movie I have no interest in and other times when nature's dues are calling. I love the game so much, and in all honesty, it's joined the ranks of games like Super Metroid in my mind.


Super Metroid Eris


I really don't have to talk about this game again. I think I've talked about it enough, but you know what, it is STILL really good.

After about halfway through it last time, I shelved it for some other game I don't remember. I think the problem was just that I had a hard time finding the Hi-jump boots and got frustrated. Maybe the difficulty finally got me; after all, Botwoon in Eris is leagues more difficult than normal Ridley. But alas, I stopped playing the game.

I started playing again and it was just as much of a blast this time as it was last. This time around, I've gotten a lot further. I'm still looking out for Ridley and Phantoon, but I got every major pickup I can think of aside from the Plasma beam.



(I really did mean for this post to be brief, but man did I ever fail at that.)

So I haven't been posting much

Why is it that once I decided to write about school related material that I stopped posting regularly?

Well, I've been thinking about that a bit myself. For one, I guess I'm slightly busy with life at the moment. I've been playing quite a few games at the moment. Specifically I've been playing Mass Effect, Persona, Ocarina of Time, Scribblenauts, Bionic Commando and Super Metroid Eris. That's a whole lot of game time really.

I have also had a research paper assigned for English and I think this time around, I'm going to do something a little closer to my heart: the birth of video games. I'm thinking about starting with the Ralph Baer book that came out last year and expanding on that. The plan is to talk about Ralph Baer and the Brown Box, Pong, Pinball, NIM and the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device. In all honesty, I don't know how easy this paper is going to be to write, but I can guarantee I'll at least have fun doing it.

That's about all I've been doing lately really. I'm still looking out for writing gigs, but I honestly don't know whether or not I'll ever get a job in my desired field. I didn't get the RPGamer job, but I really wasn't expecting to, so it's hard to be disappointed. I'm going to keep trying and keep writing and maybe someday I'll have some sort of chance.

Anyways, I'm going to write something else either immediately after this or at a later point tonight about what I've been doing in each game and what I think of it. Look forward to it, because it's happening whether or not you like it.

Mass Effect

Lately, my urge to go through windows for combat has dwindled. To be honest, I've been getting the urge to play a game where I can just shoot a dude in the head and be happy with it. I really don't play many shooters these days aside from the ancients, so I'm somewhat lacking in options here. This desire I've been dealing with is more than likely going to be quelched by Mass Effect.

I bought Mass Effect the day it came out, hoping that it would fulfill my wRPG quota for a while. It was fun times and I enjoyed what I played for the most part. The only reasons I can come up with for why I've stopped on two seperate occasions are girl issues and other games. It's really too bad though, whenever I hear someone mention it, I feel like I've missed out.

Both times when I tried to play through the game, I ended up stopping right after you get full control of the Normandy. The first time around, without knowing, I accidently went to the much more difficult second planet first and got stuck on the boss. Each time, i would get a little bit further, but my death was assured each and every time. I eventually got to the second phase of the fight, but my will to go on had dwindled.

When I played through the second time, it was right after I had gotten my HDTV and wanted to play something pretty. This time I went to the proper planet first, but it seems I chose an unfortunate time to play the thing. I started playing through about a week before the release of Metal Gear Solid 4, which essentially ate up all my game time for a while between the solo play and Metal Gear Online.

I'm due for another attempt to get through the game, but between school and some other games, I may be waiting for longer than I'm willing

The Cost of Custom Firmware

When the PSP was first unleashed upon the world, I honestly didn't think it looked to hot. I had read all kinds of rumors about how their circuit boards were mounted wrong and would eventually fizzle out, how the 'square' button's trigger was placed under the screen, and how Metal Gear Ac!d wasn't so much of a killer app as it was a money grab. What hooked me on the device was how open it was to homebrew applications and emulators. The prospect of playing Doom on the go was something I just couldn't ignore.

Like I've mentioned a few times in the past, I've never been particularly rich, so it took me just a little bit more to actually take the plunge and buy the handheld. It wasn't until I saw a video of some mysterious hacker running Final Fantasy IX at full speed that I decided that I needed to own Sony's first foray. I bought mine used and proceeded to fill the thing with ports of Jazz Jackrabbit, Doom, Heretic, POWDER, Nethack and about a thousand Tetris clones. The emulation scene was pretty active as well at the time. We had fantastic NES, Genesis, Sega CD, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance and SNES emulators aswell as the official Sony emulator that they wouldn't actually implement until about a year later. Now before you get all up my nose about the woes of piracy and all that jazz, let me just say that while it did open up the warez aspect, the emulators are what made me do it.


Let's fast forward to tomorrow. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona is going to be laying on my doorstep when I wake up and I won't be able to play it without giving up all that I had originally loved about the console. It's true that there have been a lot more newer games in the past few years that merit owning a PSP, I just can't give up the emulators for a few new games. This really hurts me though, I actually really liked the first Persona and I would really like to play it in a readable fashion. The way I see it, I have three options: Upgrade to the official firmware, buy a new PSP, or wait for a new version of Custom Firmware to be released. While the last one seems to be the most logical solution, those in the scene have come to realize that not a single team is working on it right now.

Odds are I'm going to be purchasing a used PSP 3000 tomorrow. While I can honestly say that I'll be doing so out of desperation, I can at least use my broken analog nub sensor as an acceptable excuse.

Just a note

BusterLogic the blog is changing. My goal with the blog is to create some kind of amalgam of writings to use in a portfolio to attain a job in the field of video game journalism. Right now, I don't have many readers, in fact, I only have one and he only reads occasionally. In an effort to get more attention without whoring myself out, I'm broadening the scope of what this blog is. I'm still going to focus on video games, but I'm also going to catalogue my attempts to get into the field and my efforts in school to get a degree. Not much is going to change really, I'll just be posting more.

Aside from that, I applied for a job writing for RPGamer last night. I don't really have a snowballs chance in hell at getting the gig, but I figured that I had more to lose not trying than I did to get rejected. As a part of the application, I had to write three fake news stories to prove my merits as a writer. Out of the six possible choices, I chose Pokemon, Suikoden and Banpresto to write about. In all honesty, these were probably about the three worst choices for me to write about considering my lack of knowledge in the games. I stopped caring about Pokemon after Gold and Silver with a brief relapse for Platinum and I've never really been a Suiko fan nor a fan of Super Robot Wars or Ar Tonelico. I actually typed them out on the blogspot and copy/pasted them over, so I still have saved drafts of them on my list of writings. I'll probably post them tomorrow despite their weaknesses. At least it will be fun for a read, right?

Lastly, I found out that my mini review of Super Metroid Eris was used on the download page and on NeoGAF. It's a real honor actually, I just wish that they would have linked to the blog since mine was the only one that wasn't an actual post on the forum. Oh well, it can be forgiven, Eris was fun.