Spending your money on Emo Teenage Trash games instead of pre-ordering Black Ops 3. Kill yourself.

I know I have sinned. I shall right this wrong when I finally get a PS4. Black Ops III is a better Deus Ex

I got through a couple hours of Transformers: Devastation. In terms of Combat, it's probably the best that's been done for a Transformers game. AI's very challenging and your abilities for each autobot are fairly varied - sometimes it borders on a button mash-a-thon, but the use of vehicles in transitional-attacks or other movesets can change things up fairly well. The characters themselves look closer to the classic show than High Moon Studio's more realistic take and many of the original VAs made it in too.

And now the bad.

Outside of the character models, the game looks like it came out of the Dreamcast Era - look close enough at the cityscapes in Chapter 1 and it looks like it was reused from Sonic Adventure 2(which looked great for its time, but not 15 years later). Gameplay *outside* of combat feels like a by-the-numbers Franchise-To-Video-Game cashgrab. go from point A to point B, collect random power-ups, yadda yadda. Pretty much anything resembling the set pieces of Bayonetta and Revengeance are essentially non existent. Storyline follows suit, and that really isn't surprising given it's based on G1. I enjoy the hell out of the combat, but the rest?

Hello again, VSN - Today I finished playing…



…what did I just play? I believe it was the great Lewis Black who said that A starbucks across from another Starbucks was the end of the universe. My friends, I’ve seen the end of the Universe with my own eyes.

It’s flighty, It’s feathery, and involves a hefty helping of husbandos. It’s…



Hatoful Boyfriend. Despite the Romantic and Gimmicky Exterior that I was admittedly biased towards to stray from a purchase, the game has been a pheasant surprise. The characters themselves are quite varied; Personalities like Ryouta and Kazuaki can be fairly straightforward, whereas Okosan or Shuu can sometimes feed on the absurdity of the premise through their borderline-malkavian dialogue. Romance isn’t usually involved with the characters - The name Hatoful Boyfriend can be misleading for quite a few reasons. The writers also create plenty of opportunities for said characters to butt heads or otherwise interact with each other in amusing ways. Choice & Consequence can fluctuate in quality. Sometimes it’s One-Or-The-Other, or you may get to choose optional events which could lead to an entirely different ending.

While my original impressions were somewhat mild in enthusiasm, the amount of qualitative diversity becomes more apparent after exploring the game further. While a single play through could take as little as 30-45 minutes, the vast changes between each play through and 13 memorable endings made an enormous difference as a whole. If you’re worried about wading through dialogue boxes, the game comes with a handy fast forward button to get right to the new bits.

There is also… by completing endings, other possibilities will unlock. One is relatively small, the other is far greater in scope. *How* and *When* they unlock is difficult to tell at first, but the payoff will make it clear that Hatoful Boyfriend is more than a Gimmicky VN with birds thrown in for the kicks. After all, a promise is a promise. Hohohoho

If you like weird humor and haven’t touched VNs before, Hatoful‘s a great starting point.

*Props to Observer for gifting it

Finished Far Cry 3, was playing Modern Warfare 2 and finally got the platinum trophy (six years for me to finish spec ops for good), now playing Final Fantasy X-2 and Episode 1 of Game of Thrones.

Been playing Disgaea 5 a lot recently got in the post game so it's just the grind to LVL 9999. Oh and got in the Pre-Alpha Dungeon Defenders 2 for the PS4 getting the characters to level 25 for their survivor skins before the wipe.

So.

I tried pinning down one particular thing about the game that won me over, but I think it’s the little pieces of genius, wit, and 4th wall breaking that made this my favorite borderlands game. It’s been a while since I really enjoyed an adventure game from top to bottom, and this was it. At first my impressions were fairly mild - the initial dialogue and characters didn’t really win me over. Things changed a bit around halfway.


Tales From the Borderlands definitely has flash and panache - the new name reveals always bring a smile(or confused look) to my face, and some of the camera work is pretty impressive. Voice Acting is pretty top notch, so no complaints there. Visually, it’s one of the closest they’ll get to removing the barrier between the franchise’s visual fidelity and the game itself. Working within the visual limits of the borderlands video game in terms of animation is likely a better fit than something outside of that. Visual gripes: The telltale “Surprise” face still makes me laugh for the wrong reasons, and the lip animation isn’t really beyond PS2 or early PS3. There were a couple animation errors later in the game, but nothing terribru.

As far as the story itself, they certainly got it on the nose. Besides a few moments that stretch things more than I’d like…

…It makes for a satisfying, borderline insane story of heists, action, betrayal, lovable robots, unlovable humans, and specialty pizzas while keeping the setting and the characters’ personality as an outlet of its humor, rarely if ever at the cost of it. It’s a cool game for attractive people, and I may even give it another go to see how the other choices play out.

Finished the first one yesterday. Started the second one today.

Quite right. A perfect Star Wars game, really.