Toasty Goodness

I enjoyed the idea of having your suit slowly ruined in Batman AA but come on! In Batman AC I JUST put the suit on and Two minutes later Two-Face ruins it with a gunshot wound. Fuck you Two-Face!

I’m really loving this game though. Kind of ashamed I left it hanging until now. I’m gonna savor it nicely like I did with Assassin’s Creed Revelations. :)

Ok, I admit it, at first I was not sold on Asura’s Wrath at all. In fact, go down a couple of posts and you will find the impressions of the demo. Quoting myself:

“The demo was entertaining although boring gameplay-wise, I’m not spending money on this. Rental sometime in the near future it is.”

So why did I decided to give it a try? The art to be honest. I just loved how the box art looked and decided to give it a rent. I’m glad I did because Asura’s Wrath is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had this year and a very possible personal GOTY contender.

Asura does something very different from the videogame norm and I applaud it for that. Similar to Heavy Rain, this is a deeply cinematic experience, meant to be more as an interactive movie than an actual game. The difference here is that the gameplay, which is NOT boring as I initially thought, is a mixture of action and fighting games.

Asura is built like an anime from the very capable hands of Cyber Connect 2, which has brought us several anime gems like the .hack series of faux MMO RPGs and all of the Naruto games. These guys are huge anime nerds and proud of it, so I imagine no other studio could have achieved what they did with Asura.

The idea is to showcase a fully original anime “series” and mix it with a videogame for delicious results. Asura combines Asian Mythology with sci fi futuristic tech (take my word from it, you won’t understand this concept until you check the game out, I know I didn’t) to create an full Anime experience. The game is structured in episodes which last the average length of an anime episode, complete with initial credits and title screen, a commercial break title screen cuts, and “on the next episode” promos at the end. The result is a full interactive anime show that has a very good plot that was engaging throughout the whole game. The need to boot up the next episode to find out what happens next is very similar to that sensation you feel when finishing an Anime episode and the guys at Cyber Connect 2 really nailed the vibe. As you proceed through the game you find out that it is broken in three parts, which I like to think of as seasons, and the plot gets better and better as you reach each new season.

So, is it a game or an anime? It nails being both. It is full of gorgeously detailed cutscenes in which there is a large number of quick time events, and this is the majority of the game. Thankfully the command prompts are not obtrusive to enjoying the scenes while also being easy to see to react in time, so the quick time events don’t feel like a chore. When fights break out, the game takes a more action approach with a decent system for doing fun combos and special attacks. Being able to knock an enemy back lets you do an area attack which helps you clear masses of enemies at once. Doing enough combos also fills out a gauge that lets you unleash as many special attacks as you want without overheating. There is also counterattacks to keep you on your toes. A bar above screen governs all your actions. There is your life bar and underneath there is a burst bar. The burst bar works as the enemy life bar, but instead of emptying as you shell out damage, it fills up more and more with your attacks letting you do an awe-inspiring finisher attack that continues the action into more scenes. If you ever saw an anime fight and wondered how cool it would be to play the fight then Asura’s Wrath is for you.

I came away very impressed with Asura’s Wrath. The gameplay was very fun and the anime scenes had me cheering like a kid and enjoying every second. I totally ate up the anime concept and the way each episode played out like a real anime episode. The music was simply great as well, and I could not allow myself to finish this post without admiring how awesome it was. So many different flavors of music all combined created one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever experience.

Asura may not be a full game to some because of its overabundance of cutscenes but to me it was something different and refreshing to come across. The way each episode ranks you for being good at combat, doing it as fast as possible and nailing as much of the quick time events as possible ensures a lot of replayability as well, considering there are also multiple difficulties and different gauges to activate which change gameplay conditions considerably and you have a full game that will keep anime fans busy for weeks. To me, Asura’s Wrath was the whole package and a great experience. I can only hope Cyber Connect 2 keeps on bringing fresh experiences like this in the future.

Score: 10/10

Have you ever been sleeping and your mind plays tricks with you? Like combine sounds from the real world and incorporate them into the dream?

That happens to me ALL the time

The thing is, it happens to me in the worst of ways, as my mind likes incorporating the alarm sound. Think of any kind of chaotic situation where an alarm is blaring and I probably had a dream about it:

• Nuclear alarm in a destroyed Raccoon City-like environment.
• Activating the dormant Nuke in Megaton
• Having to input the 4 8 15 16 23 42 sequence into the computer over at the swan station underneath the island to save the world from space-time anomalies
• Being found while infiltrating an Alaskan military base.

This morning I was escaping out of a Nuclear underground base. The alarm sound was blaring very loud and there I was shooting people, ordering my teammates to cover me, oh, and being VERY late in the real world. 

By the time I realized it was a dream and finally woke up the alarm had been blaring for 40 minutes straight. If we are to use the ‘Mind works faster in dreamstate’ rule from Inception and apply the time conversion of 5 minutes equaling 1 hour in the dream (not to be confused with the later anesthetic-infused compound in the film which largely extrapolated this conversion) we get that I was in that dream for around 8 hours.

8 hours?! 8 hours to get out of a Nuclear underground base?! And I had like 4 teammates! I must really be the worst trained soldier in the history of fiction.

My mind sucks, and I am still very late.

Friend: “Why did you got Dynasty Warriors for Vita? Are you ridiculous? It’s just the same game than the rest of the series! You just payed to play the same game again.”

Me: “Yeah that’s great for people that have played a Dynasty Warriors game before. I never have, so to me it’s fresh”

Friend: “Yeah but……——-you’ve never played DW?…..I can’t deal with you….”

Me: “I just closed up shop here. Sorry I took so long. Driving fast to meet up.”

Girl: “Ok, I’m in front of the 24-hour Subway. Can’t miss me, I’m wearing a top hat.”

Fair enough I think. Top hats are in this season right?

And so began a night of hanging out and getting drunk. We ended up at her house and we kept on drinking and watching American Horror Story. I didn’t try anything, I wanted to be gentlemanly cause she just broke up. I didn’t want to unnecesarily ruin a great friendship. 

I have gotten hell from my friends for choosing to do this, I’m afraid.

At the end of the night when I went to my car my windshield wipers were up; her ex-dude passed by and did it. Creeeeeepy. 

Crazy day, huh?

kellyoxford:

Sorry this is basically a sony ad, but the results ACTUALLY freaked me out.
I’m sure there are a ton of these around, but this was the first I’ve seen.
Stare at the red dot on her nose for 30 seconds.
Look at the ceiling and blink really quickly.

WHAT THE FUCK BRAIN!?!?!?!
WHAT
THE
FUCK….

Just finished trying out the two new demos that came out last tuesday on PSN. Asura’s Wrath was disappointing to put it mildly. I like my over the top action, games like Devil may Cry and Vanquish make me squee like a 15 year old girl at a Bieber concert, but the over the top action here was just too out there and ridiculous. Gameplay was all over the place and for the most part was a barrage of quick time event button inputs. I was bored but played both episodes on it to give it a chance. It was entertaining although boring gameplay-wise, Im not spending money on this. Rental sometime in the near future it is.

Asura’s Wrath Verdict: Rental in the very distant future,VERY distant. 

FF XIII-2 was another story entirely. I loved the way they kept the battle system the same. It’s one of my top battle systems in the FF franchise and I really enjoyed exploring around in the demo. They even give you a chance to try out sidequests, and let you level up, buy newer weapons and try out the monster party system. It felt great they let me try out so much, especially to level up as normal and play around on the menu, as they normally dont do this on RPG demos. Overall I spent about 2 hours on this having a blast, grinding and loving the battle system and enjoying being in XIII’s world again. January 31st cannot come soon enough. Im looking forward to many long nights (possibly all nighters) with this one

FF XIII-2 Verdict: SUPER DUPER MEGA BUY on January 31

Since L asked me I might as well go all out for now. Granted I only played the game for a short bit but I did play enough to guesstimate how the experience will be. First impression I got as soon as it loaded up is that it has a very cinematic flair to it. The action sequences on the opening scene are heart pumping and Sakuraba’s presence is felt in the music. Beginning sequence one you start the story is equally nice looking but on that note, just WTF is going on? people are falling, nice sceneries, staple incoherent Japanese babble goes on and Im lost. From what I could gather once you settle into the game, the pre-start screen movie and opening sequence serves to show you (somewhat) how the team in the game met. Basically its three characters making a living on this steampunk world by taking on quests of different kinds. 

The world has a lot of ambiance. The absence of a conventional town in FFXIII really made me appreciate the starting town here. Overall the feel and motivation is there. Its now up to the bread and butter of an RPG to see If Im gonna be hooked: The Combat.

As I tweeted earlier. Combat was a royal mess at first. The game donkey punches you by giving you tutorials on how to take up quests yet not teaching you anything when you enter a battle. For the longest time in the battle I couldnt figure out how to shoot. A gauge would fill up and down, my character would remain motionless and enemies would shoot at me like I was a cardboard cutout in a shooting field.

Thanks to Jeff I was able to figure out the kinks by going to the training Arena. From there on I was able to complete the first quest and continue with the story. I get the feeling that this is the type of game that instead of congratulating you when you gradually progress its steep learning curve it just throws higher hurdles your way in return. In classic Japanese masochistic fashion, battles have got progressively harder to accomplish, necessitating a studying of the surrounding and formulating strategies before even moving a step.

Combat is hard but rewarding is what im trying to say but i can definitely see how it can turn off many as Im not entirely sold on it yet; it demands way too much. Another sour point is that the story is not the focus of the game from what I can see. Like I said before the beginning sequences made no sense and cutscenes are just people talking nonsense. From what I have read, the story never seems to achieve a sense of completion and it continues to be vague and disorganized throughout the whole game.

So in conclusion, right now im 50/50 on it. Graphics and sound are gorgeous, world is enjoyable to be in and it has a hook factor but combat is very demanding and hard to master with a deep learning curve and increasing difficulty. To top it all off, the story is a mess and it really hurts my opinion on the game. They are on the right track with a lot of aspects in the game and im definitely interested in seeing more of it but time will tell if ill give up on the hurdles and move to more friendly games.