Corpse Party (PSP)

me:  my little sister can't possibly need to pee this badly!

Friend:  what?

 me:  Corpse Party has a large part of the plot be about a 14 year old that needs to use a bathroom and no she just won't go anywhere in this other dimension haunted school.  She's Moe with a capital M.

 Friend:  ugh

Moe is what happens when anime fans stare at their own navels so much that it comes out the other side or something.

 me:  it gets kind of boring with how absolutely freaked out the female cast gets at everything.  Also that they sound ~moe~ and not like actual high school girls

that's a good description of moe

Friend:  yeah, so what you are saying is Corpse Party is probably skippable.

 me:  yeah I suppose.

it's interesting in how effective it is at being a horror game with 16 bit graphics

on the other hand what I just describe above gets in the way of that

 Friend:  i would love to see more exploration of using lower end graphics for horror.  I think something that makes LSD such an effective little game is that weird uncanniness of 32 bit graphics.

and 16 bit could definitely be used similarly, yeah

 me:  nodding my head

 Friend:  if only japan didn't have its whole moe thing

 me:  it also makes me curious if there are any other really good RPG maker games out there (probably, I'm not going to look for them though)

Friend:  yeah, i imagine there are.  i always kinda meant to investigate RPG maker, as I think it could be used as a very strange and effective tool for telling stories, if people could get past RPG tropes and such.

 me:  oh okay here's a reason to skip CP (honk honk honk).  There's a somewhat pivotal scene of a girl being strangled.  Our still of course has a panty shot.

 Friend:  goddammit japan

why do you have such a gift for taking things that could be interestingly traumatic, and then always adding such a creepy perversion to them?

it really is some kind of cultural gift they have

 me: :|

really Japan.

REALLY JAPAN?

Guess ~my little sister~ just had her first cycle.

 Friend: oh jesus

seriously? they found a way to go super seiyan moe

i picture a fat otaku kid just spontaneously getting blonde hair sticking straight up at that exact moment

 me:  I wonder if the xseed translator banged his head at this part

I would hope

Friend:  i would definitely hope so

just smashed his head into his desk and sat there and thought "really? is this what I have worked towards for however many years now?"

 me:  oh okay yep netherworld hell hole.  Time to talk about his problems with asking girls out to his super saiyan moe sister that just arrggggggg

Friend:  wow, this sounds like an anime/moe trainwreck

 me:  I've done my best to avoid it but yeah we are in moe hell.  All the Hell, All the Moe.

 me:  this game made me realize I'll never hear the equivalent in japanese of, "I love you, but seriously SHUT UP."

 Friend:  welcome to the abyss, rudie.

haha, just not a thing that happens in japan?

 me:  in the language yeah.  It's a pretty good phrase.

there's no "shut up" in japanese the closest is "you are loud."

Friend:  haha, that is kind of amazing to think about

intsead of a command to another person (shut up), you have a suggestion that the person is bothering you.

that says way too much about how the world is viewed in japanese linguistics

 me:  it does.

Friend:  so basically Corpse Party sounds like it might be a "State of the Moe" address on your PSP.

 me:  more like a dictionary definition

modern moe is more than this.  I'm curious how much of this game has been changed since 1996

Friend:  ah, fair enough.

still, potentially useful for someone, as moe as proven a hard term to define

 me:  it's your 14 year old younger sister that has all the life skills of a 3 year old.

Friend:  haha

and somehow you are supposed to feel some degree of affection and possibly sexual desire for her.

 me:  pretty amazing that not just one person's standards get fucked that badly but enough for a (sub)culture.

Friend:  yeah, that is the spectacular thing about "moe"

like if it was just one dude somewhere making silly games/comics about his little issues with young girls, that would be one thing

you could say "well, at least it's only that weirdo" but no

we have like an industry built on it

anime/manga/fighting games/shmups/so much stuffff

 me:  I wonder if a lot of these problems aren't based around Japan thinking High School was the best years of their lives (versus College)

Friend:  eh, but in small town america, that kind of thinking is stilla ctive as well

though it takes on slightly different tones in the US

Friend:  but i think part of it probably has to do with some sort of innocence longing tied into the love of nostalgia

Solatorobo (DS) Otomedius Excellent (360)

Man Solatorobo.  It has to win for best DS graphics.  It's just absolutely stunning at times.  The plot is lighthearted until it gets 26 episode anime like a 26 episode anime would.  It has a battle system based around throwing things.  You "fish" by shooting harpoons at hermit crabs with battleships on its back. 

It's just too easy too breezy.  You do things and then you did them.  There's no challenge and so no sense of accomplishment.  The battles become more about how to do that as absolutely fast as possible so you can advance the plot.  Wait you can't advance the plot until you raise your HUNTER LEVEL.  That means you have to do sidequests with the end of the world looming.  It's the largest momentum killer in a game with a severe lack of momentum.  I wish I could like it more.  It has so much detail to the world and the cutscenes and the controls are pretty good.  It's just there isn't the spark that is "entertaining to play."  It might have been surgically removed so you feel this emptiness where joy at playing it should be. 

I'm not entirely convinced making it harder would have helped.  It took 10 years to make supposedly and it almost feels like the opposite of games that take a long time to make.  Instead of becoming harder and harder and harder and more precise (Super Meat Boy yo!) you have it being challenging to no one.

Otomedius Excellent is uninspired. I mean yeah we got anime girls as spaceships and that's pretty creepy but that's also it. The first and second stages are alright I guess? then it's just a parade of boring bland space areas and pretty much the same boss all the way through. You have that speeding part that is kind of neat but then it's over and you have a boss rush of what might be the same bosses you fought in the previous stages or new bosses I COULDN'T TELL.

Actraiser (SNES)

What a pleasant game Actraiser!  It's by Quintet which I've talked about before on this blog.  I am jumping all around on the release of their games.  All that's left for me to play is the supposedly mediocre PS1 game and Terranigma.  I'll get to that one soon.

Yes Actraiser is so pleasant.  You fight some things and then you play a mild sim and then you fight some things.  Just sit back and play it and relax and have just a jolly of a time.  The game requires that you play moderately well at the end Boss Rush but why shouldn't it?  Then you got Yuzo Koshiro impersonating John Williams for most of the soundtrack.

I would like to try the all action sequel that I hear is worse but my emulator wouldn't play it so I decided to spend my time elsewhere.

So you need something to do on a Saturday afternoon?  Play Actraiser.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson)

A nice way to spend two hours?  Not something I ever plan on watching again, but I might buy the smooth jazz soundtrack soon.

It's a spy movie that is probably what real spying is like.  Set in the 1970s there's a mole in the British service right at the top where men discuss the fate of the world in a tiny orange room.  Gary Oldman is brought out of being fired by the agency to finding out who is giving secrets away that caused him to get fired.  It's simultaneously very slow and doesn't at all stop to let you catch up with the plot.  It doesn't explain anything and expects you catch a lot of little details.

However none of that has to do with participating in figuring out which of 4 men is the mole.  You know from the beginning of the movie that it is either one of them or TWIST ENDING.  None of the men are given enough development for you to suspect or support them.  Gary is going to figure out it is one of them.  His assistant has the most high strung scenes in the movie.  Tom Hardy plays an incredibly handsome side character with a superfluous sex scene.

Still I watched it, didn't hate it, then went home.  The Cappuccino I was served was mediocre and took 20 minutes to get my change.  Thanks theater with a Starbucks in it!  Still a successful evening.

Parodius (Various)

I've never really gotten into the Parodius series and last week I decided to go ahead and play as many as was convenient hen read the HG101 article.  Basically they're parodies of Konami's other shooters primarily Gradius.  There are a lot of cross over characters and most of the games also use Twinbee's Bells.  Twinbee is another series I plan on going through soon.  I played Gokujou Parodius, Parodius Da!, and  Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius S. 

It helps that I played mostly the SFC versions of the games and my emulator decided to recognize rewind.  I wasn't playing these for skill.  I was playing them for research more or less.  They aren't as interesting as I was expecting and even while I was playing them they sort of ran together.  The most identifying mark between them was the cast of characters I could control.  Also that Da! was incredibly hard possibly based on the character I was chosen.  After about 20 minutes of rewinding and dying in the same 30 seconds I quit.  It feels like some sections of the game are completely based on if you get an invincibility bell or not.  I know that saved my skin a 3 or 4 times across the games.

Jikkyou is notable because it has a guy narrating all the way through on a SFC game.  I believe the cart size is impressively huge.  Also you fight Twinbee with tits.  I mean Twinbee has breasts.  yeahh...  I guess I need something more than honk honk splurt bwaaoooohhhh humor.  I couldn't tell you a think about the music. There is a lot of non-necessary animation which in my mind reads "these guys really liked this project and were proud of it" than engaging to me.

I guess I'm just wired weird.  Sorry Parodius!  I might still buy Otomedius despite everything telling me it's not a very good game.

El Shaddai (PS3) Shadows of the Damned (PS3)

First off a year end award.  Congratulations to Portal 2 for having obnoxiously load times between areas in 2011.  Really hit it out of the park with that one.

Shadows of the Damned is uh...well not much of anything.  It feels like the sort of goop of a game that comes out when after 18 months of development the main character design still isn't decided.  The sort of game where the director is Italian and unknown and the first thing out of gamespot's interviewer's mouth is "You're not the only big name attached to this, talk about all these Japanese guys."

EDIT: Forgot to mention.  Fuck this game has like the worst boot up.  It takes about 3 minutes.   First it loads the opening cutscene that you are eventually allowed to skip. then loads.  then shows a "title screen" then you click start and it plays THE SAME SCENE YOU JUST SKIPPED so you skip it again then loading THEN the actual menu.  God that almost made me turn off the game.  If you play it you get in the mood to play it for AS LONG AS POSSIBLE because the alternative is you might get so frustrated with the boot up next time you'll decide to go outside and take an interest in sports.

It's a difficult game to discuss because there's so much not there.  It's all "kinda good" but not really remarkable.  There's some almost set pieces.  Some of the game looks really great but it's difficult to care about it being really great.  The plot was either worked on way too much or way too little.  Everything was worked on way too much or way too little.  The dialog is well acted and while not as good as Nier's is up there in delivery.  It still just sort of sits there dead and lifeless and hmm.

Except the music.  Oh man Akira's Yamaoka's soundtrack carried Shadows.  And hey there's one song on the soundtrack that perfectly sums up the game and it's only 1:20 long!  "As Evil As Dead" is the beginning of an amazing Queen style ballad butnononono it just ends.
 

El Shaddai is filled with amazing sights.  Absolutely astounding visuals.  Also only about half a game design document and a very obvious point where they covered for running out of money.  It's a labor of love.  I'd love to know if they expected to set the world on fire or were content with making a beautiful piece of art that no one would care about.  Because holy shit some of the shit you see.  Man it is amazing.  Then they ran out of time.

But thanks to El Shaddai I got to revist the forgotten concept of travelling into the screen, going fast, as a looming icon becomes ever larger and ever closer.  Then they ran out of money but had to finish the game.  El Shaddai at least gets right the core combat mechanics.  They are rock solid.  They knew how to design a character.  They got a character that was fun to control and had simply jump, block, attack, reload.  May this group of people move on to create something else wonderful.

I definitely ended up with positive opinions of both games.  I'll probably play both of them again one day hopefully probably not.  I think they are both better than Vanquish.  Maybe I'll go back to that soon if Battlefield 3 didn't continue to be the most fun I can have with my PS3.  I've got a 40-80 hour RPG to play on the damn thing! Resonance of Fate!

Wild Arms 5 (PS2)

A JRPG about a full of spunk boy that wants to become [noun] [adventure-synonym].  He has a feisty redhead [childhood friend/sibling].  On the night before he plans to leave his home village a mysterious silver haired girl falls from the sky and utters "Johnny Appleseed."  She has amnesia.

Wait "Johnny Appleseed?"

Then in the first real dungeon a cutaway showing the possible evil guys plans with evil.  Then party member who is on the title screen but we've never met is having trouble in the second town. Then I decided yep okay.

The music was kind of nice.  And I like how China the starting area felt, then it also had spaceships and rustic farms and ancient mayan ruins and hotpants and uhhh....

EDIT: I should mention I played this specifically because the japanese title is Wild Arms V: The Vth Vanguard.