PlayStation Vita

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/23/2015

Posted in: Linux, Mac, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch. Tagged: hotline miami 2, playstation, ps3, ps4, vita, wrong number. Leave a comment

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Developer: Dennaton

Release Date: 3/10/2015

Available On

Hotline Miami was one of my favorite games in 2013. It was violent, fast-paced, had tight controls, and rocked a retro 8-bit art style like no other game has. The music was fantastic as well, but the best part was the “just one more level” appeal. Hotline Miami 2 brings back epic music, great art, violence, and, well, some other things we didn’t really want.

Wrong Number starts out by giving us some backstory. Well, it tries and miserably fails at it. The story does not make one lick of sense because you are being flip-flopped between time periods and so many different characters. Each level just starts, and the story is just there. There’s some dialog with no connection to the previous scene. It’s frustrating and makes you want the storyless original back. However, and it pains me to say this, the story isn’t the worst thing in Miami 2. The game is excruciatingly difficult. Miami 1 was hard, but satisfying. It had great replay value because it was the perfect challenge. Miami 2 is a near-frustrating mess of endless restarts and trial-and-error.

You could say it’s a worse-level design, but that’s not the case; I feel it’s more like poor enemy placement. There are so many enemies in each level, and I mean tons. They all have a variety of guns and melee weapons, and a few can only be taken down with certain weapons. I feel the placement is haphazard; we used strategies in the last game that were way overused here and ended up being used to exploit the game to advance, which is not fun at all. Enemies will see you if you can see them; this is how Hotline Miami works. If you can pan the camera further away, you can get a quick sniper shot at them and a free hit, but for fewer points. One good strategy is to move in and out of a doorway really quickly, let some enemies see you, duck back into a corner, and slice everyone up as they enter the doorway or around a corner. That was an infrequent strategy in Miami 1, but in Miami 2, this has to be done to just get partway through one area. Miami 2 is also full of long-winded levels that seem to never end.

Abusing Miami’s strategies is a crying shame here since this game could have had so much potential for more enemies and new strategies. After halfway through the game, the levels become large and hard to navigate with traditional Hotline Miami controls and gameplay. It’s almost like the game tried to go in a new direction but didn’t evolve its gameplay for it. Miami 2 is also twice as long as the first game, but it overstays its welcome after the second act. I literally felt like the game had become a chore and just wanted it to end.

However, that’s not to say the whole “one more level” thing is gone. I was hooked, and the constant trial and error had me restarting levels dozens and dozens of times to try a new strategy, but it wasn’t really an enjoyable “one more level” feeling. A lot of times I had to exploit the enemy AI. Only certain levels can really be completed one way, and if you start a level with the wrong weapon, kill the wrong guy first, or even kill all the enemies in the wrong order, you’re pretty much screwed. More often than not, I was restarting a level not because my strategy wasn’t sound, but because the enemy AI screwed everything up because he wasn’t patrolling the correct corridor or left a room he’s normally in and blindsided me when I least expected it. Usually, this is a good thing, but not when you’re forced to kill enemies in a certain way due to poor enemy placement being overwhelming.

With that said, I hate to say that there’s really no reason to come back to this game after you finish. Do I want to spend an entire week restarting level after level again and again? Of course not. I’d rather re-download the first game and enjoy the excellent Miami-ness without all the hair-pulling. All in all, Miami 2 is not really a must-play, even for fans. If you end up never playing this, you’re probably better off sticking with the first game.

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Tales of Hearts R

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/19/2015

Posted in: iOS, Mobile Reviews, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: jrpg, playstation, Sony, tales of hearts r, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: Namco Bandai

Developer: 7seventh Chord

Release Date: 11/11/2014

Available On

If you have been following this site for a while, you will know by now that I don’t have much patience for JRPGs. They are usually extremely long, random battles get tedious to the point of me wanting to quit the game completely, and sometimes the stories and battle systems can be boring, convoluted, or both. Tales of Hearts R just so happened to be one of the few JRPGs available on Vita, so I thought I would give it a try. I was in for a strange surprise.

The story itself is actually pretty decent and actually makes sense, despite how involved it is. You play as a young hero named Kor Metor who is traveling the world to help save a girl named Kohaku along with her brother. There are links within people called Spirias. This is kind of like their soul. Somatics has weapons that are formed from this spiria, and Kor discovers he is one after watching his grandfather die at the hands of a woman named Incarose. There is a “Spiria disease” called xeroms that can cause dispiration within people, meaning part of their Spiria Core is missing or corrupted. Kor and his friends “link” with people to fight off this corruption. Kor does this to Kohaku and shatters her core, sending the shards into eight pieces across the globe. However, what threw me for a loop was that this whole adventure was only the first half of the game. The second half involves another huge plot with an entire ancient planet that can suck out these Spirias. Of course, your new goal is to stop this new evil madman.

Holy crap… I can’t believe I remember all that! With that said, the story consists of endless cut scenes—I mean, endless. There are probably hundreds of cutscenes in this game, but 90% of them are spoken Japanese dialog, which is nice. There are a few anime cutscenes that are beautiful, but I wish there were more. I know most people like cut scenes, but I honestly felt it held up the game too much, but that’s just personal preference. Aside from the story, the combat is actually pretty intense and deep. You can control four different party members in real-time in an arena. The attack buttons are completely customizable, allowing you to assign new skills and “arts” to Circle and X. While you hack away at enemies, a meter will charge that allows you to go into a “hyperdrive” mode to deal more damage and take less. All while this is going on, you can also assign other members’ skills to the touch screen by flicking their icon, which I thought was a nice touch. I had one party member heal at my beck and call exactly how I wanted him to instead of relying on his AI, which would usually wait until everyone’s HP was in the red.

Secondly, you level up in this game very oddly, and it took me a while to figure it out. You don’t buy weapons in shops, only armor. Weapons are acquired by leveling up your members through their Somas. There’s some sort of complicated line chart in the form of a star, but thankfully the auto-level button just lets you choose what type of fighting style you want for that character, and it will assign the points accordingly. Along with this, there are also cooking items that give you boosts during battles, but I never really got into this much. It did come in handy at times, but thankfully you level up fairly quickly while only hitting a difficulty spike on the last two bosses of the game. This required me to level grind for over a day just to raise my members up to about 12 levels to get an edge over the bosses.

Lastly, there’s a lot of side content in this game and a New Game+, which is usually unheard of in JRPGs as they are linear and follow a set pattern and path. There are other difficulty levels that also raise the level cap (200), as well as a few side quests for people interested in some more side stories (I usually hate side quests in JRPGs). With all that said, it’s optional.

After the credits rolled and I logged 30 hours into this game, I felt satisfied. The ending had closure, the final boss was rewarding to fight, and I felt myself feeling relieved that the game was just the right amount of challenge throughout and did not require constant bouts of level grinding. Graphically, the game is average. It’s not very ugly, but it also doesn’t push the Vita to its limits. The music is monotonous and typical of a JRPG, but at least the voice acting is great. If you own a Vita, this is probably the best JRPG you can plan outside of all those PS1 classics.

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Jak 3 – 10 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 10/13/2014

Posted in: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles. Tagged: daxter, jak 3, ps2, ps3, Sony, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: Naughty Dog/Mass Media

Release Date: 6/18/2013

Available On

Well, I finally did it. I have played the entire Jak and Daxter trilogy, and I have to say it is one of the most overhyped and overrated game series ever made. While the characters and charm are memorable, everything else is sub-par and less than mediocre. I thought that three times in Naughty Dog would have nailed the gameplay and fixed everything from Jak II, but I was wrong. Instead, we get to revisit that crap fest with just some updated areas of Haven City and an entirely new, boring open desert we can drive cars in that has awful physics.

Jak-and-Daxter-HD-Collection-Coming-in-February-Video-and-Screenshots-Available-6

Jak and Daxter must stop Errol, who is a half-cyborg, from getting to the Death Star. The only worthwhile part of the game is at the very end, when we finally get to know what the precursors are, and I was very satisfied when I found out. Everything else is slightly smelly crap, but complete crap nonetheless. We’re stuck with the same linear level design, repeated mission areas, hard as hell difficulty, wonky platforming, extremely wacky physics, and too much traveling between missions. I loved the new characters, but that’s all this game really had to go for it.

All the new content doesn’t really feel new. Sure, the missions weren’t as difficult as in Jak II, but they were still annoying and boring. This felt like Jak 2.5 rather than a true sequel. The new open desert area is a complete bore to drive in, and bandits will constantly spawn to attack you relentlessly. You are given several buggies, but they all drive like crap. The only helpful addition were the new weapon mods. There are three for each weapon we had in the last game, but they are all really useful, and I relied on them a lot throughout the game. However, the auto lock-on system is still just as crappy, and you waste a lot of ammo just trying to aim in the general direction of the enemy.

Let’s talk about Haven City. I thought I would never have to see that awful city again, but here we are. Each section has been more…updated due to the ongoing war with the Metal Heads and Krimson Guard. The areas are a tad more wide open, and the same vehicles drive a tiny bit better, but not much. There is a new camera angle that puts you right behind Jak, but it just made me noxious due to the awful physics. I really just wanted the game to end, and it felt like a chore, just like the last two games.

With that said, if you played Jak II, you won’t need to expect much from Jak 3. I’m not sure if I’m more disappointed with Jak II than this game, but I honestly can’t recommend this one either. The entire series feels like a complete bust to me, and that’s a crying shame.

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Jak II – 11 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 10/02/2014

Posted in: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles. Tagged: daxter, jak ii, playstation, ps2, ps3, Sony, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: Naughty Dog/Mass Media

Release Date: 6/18/2013

Available On

This review has actually been a long time coming. I never really liked or got into Jak and Daxter. I gave Jak II a shot back when I was about 13 and, for some reason, liked it, but I also remember being extremely frustrated and hating it too. The game was a complete redesign of the series. Gone is the aimless platforming and collect-a-thon stuff. Here we have an open-world GTA: Vice City clone with attitude. Jak II received a lot of criticism for steering away from the cheery tone of the first game. Jak now talks but has a bad attitude; he shoots guns; and the game has more spunk and adult content. It was a great step for the series, but it created more problems than the first game had.

The first thing is the crappy open world. I can’t tell you how tedious and frustrating it is to move around in this damn city. It’s a maze for one with tight linear areas to move around and the vehicles controlled like complete garbage. You bump into everything as you’re driving around, and if the game itself isn’t hard enough, I died multiple times just trying to get to a mission. I have never seen such a poorly built open city before; this takes the cake. If the vehicles aren’t enough, the difficulty of the game is by far the hardest. I guarantee 95% of players will quit before they even get five missions in. You will die time and time again, but not only because it’s hard. The game is just poorly designed.

Take into account no lock-on for aiming whatsoever. You’re left with poor auto-aim, which doesn’t work half the time. Add on glitches, sloppy platforming, and a crappy hoverboard, and you have a craptastic game. Now, that’s not to say Jak II didn’t have potential. It has an AAA budget written all over it. Excellent voice acting, great graphics—the works. It just seems the development team wasn’t up to speed on how smoothly a game needs to play.

Even with the poor gameplay elements aside, the game seems like it wasn’t playtested. Some areas are so difficult to get through; this usually includes the mass amounts of enemies you have to shoot, and you literally need to rely on luck that the AI will miss more than hit just so you can pass on. But the one ultimate reason that this game cannot be forgiven is the lack of checkpoints. I don’t just mean there’s one or two poorly placed. I mean, there are none, zero. You will get halfway through a mission, die, and restart over and over again at the beginning. This is just absurd and completely unfair. If the game had fair checkpoints, I could overlook everything else, but that one major issue nearly ruins the game.

I also don’t like how long this game is. With the difficulty and poor mechanics in place, you just want it to end. Be it the hair-tearing racing missions, hoverboard missions, or the nearly unbeatable timed missions, I don’t think I can remember a game harder than maybe Demons’ Souls, but that game was at least understandable as to why it was hard. It was meant to be that way. Jak II is not.

I really wanted to love this game, but I just can’t. Even with the somewhat interesting Saturday morning cartoon-type story, I just hated this game. I will never play it again and wouldn’t wish for my worst enemy to sit through this. Jak II has a great AAA feel but a low-budget, bargain bin gameplay aesthetic. The game also looks good on the Vita, but like Jak and Daxter, the frame rate drops to single digits quite often and chugs. Either the game is pushing the Vita too hard or it’s just poorly optimized. Even without that issue, the game is just terrible.

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Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy – 13 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/18/2014

Posted in: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles. Tagged: daxter, jak, naughty dog, playstation, precursor legacy, ps2, ps3, Sony, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: Naughty Dog

Release Date: 12/3/2001 (Ps2), 2/12/2012 (Ps3), 6/18/2013 (Vita)

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I can’t begin to tell you how many chances I have given this game throughout my childhood. When I first tried the game back in 2002, I had no idea what to even do. The game does not give you any hints, there’s no map, and there certainly aren’t any traditional objectives. The story is somewhat entertaining, but it’s cut short due to the short length of the game.

You play Jak, who is just an average dude who gets stuck trying to do something. Well, eventually you find out you’re trying to find all the mages to open their portals and find out why they are missing. Then Daxter gets himself mixed up in Dark Eco and becomes an otter. He’s your sarcastic yet slightly annoying sidekick through the entire game.

The main issue with Jak and Daxter isn’t the story or the fact that you have no idea where to go or what to do. It’s the platforming mechanics. They are sluggish, slippery, and just awful. In fact, I have played worse platformers with better controls. Just simply jumping from platform to platform can be a chore that causes multiple deaths. It also doesn’t help that the platforming segments are excruciatingly difficult. I went from area to area, tearing my hair out because the game is so frustrating. Even the mini-games are ridiculously hard and require meticulous memorization and reflexes. Now I don’t want my handheld to go through the whole thing, but I want to make it fun while also being challenging. The entire game felt like a huge chore.

The whole point of going through these areas is to collect power cells. These are needed to progress through the three areas of the game. In the third section, you need 73, and there’s 101 in the whole game. That’s a lot of frustrating platforming. To acquire these power cells, you need to complete one of the eight objectives in each area. Some require fighting certain enemies, while others require finding items or going through a platforming segment. The biggest problem with this is that the levels are so poorly designed. I got lost all the time, not knowing where to go or even an indication of where I’m going or what I was doing, which is part of the objective.

Here’s another big problem with the game. It was one of the last “collect-a-thon” games similar to Donkey Kong 64 and various other 3D platformers of the time. Collecting Precursor Orbs to buy power cells is just a chore. I despise collecting like this in a game because, to me, it feels like an excuse for filler content.

I seriously could not take it anymore after almost getting to the final boss. I spent hours in frustration and anger and probably died over 100 times. Dying wouldn’t be so bad if you had more than three hits before you died and it didn’t take 50 green eco-orbs to get a health piece back.

At least the graphics are nice, and the game has a nice atmosphere and charm about it. The Vita and PS3 versions have upgraded lighting effects, some texture filtering, and anti-aliasing thrown in for good measure. The game looks pretty decent, even for a 12-year-old game.

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Tearaway

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/18/2014

Posted in: PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles. Tagged: media molecule, playstation, Sony, tearaway, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: Media Molecule

Release Date: 11/22/2013

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Media Molecule is known for innovation. LittleBigPlanet was a huge revolution in creative sandbox gameplay and platforming. Tearaway does the same thing for the Vita, but for the platforming genre. The game is the best-looking game for Vita and is the only one that uses all of the hardware’s features in a very unique and original way.

You play as the messenger Atoi, who must reach the sun where you (the player) have ripped a hole and are letting Scraps into the world of Tearaway. The game uses a front-facing camera to show you the sun. You can then control Atoi and guide him using the rear touchpad and touchscreen. There really aren’t complicated puzzles, but challenging platforming sections. When you see gray areas with the PS buttons on them (like the rear touchpad), you can poke your finger through them in the game. The first time I did this, it made me giddy and smile. You can do this to fight off scraps, push blocks around, and bounce drum pads to help Atoi along. You can also use the touch screen to roll out paper and interact with dozens and dozens of various papercraft items.

Just these two major features alone are enough to call Tearaway the best game for Vita, but it doesn’t stop there. You can customize Atoi and characters in the world, kind of like LBP. There’s no Pop-It, but you can buy items using confetti you find in the world. There aren’t as many items as LBP, but because it’s a straight-up platformer, you won’t really need that many items. Tearaway also has a unique papercraft origami collection you can find and print out online to create your own Tearaway world. To acquire these blueprints, you need to find pure white objects in the world and take pictures of them. This adds to the creativity on a whole new level and helps build on this “real world leaking into the virtual world” theme.

Outside of platforming and customizing things, there is combat, but it’s very simple and easy. You can’t die in the game, and combat never varies, from jumping on scraps to picking them up and throwing them. Some involve jumping on their springpad and tapping them to kill them. I wish the combat were a little deeper, but what’s here at least works and is fun. There’s a lot of stuff to find in the world, like hidden presents and side objectives where you help out various animals. After you beat the game, the only thing you can do is complete the game 100%, but the game is well worth multiple playthroughs.

Let’s talk about graphics. I have no idea how MM got this game to look like a PS3 game, but they did. There are no jaggies, no ugly low-resolution textures, the lighting is great, and the animations are gorgeous. Wrinkled paper on the ground can be stepped on, and you can watch it depress and rise back up when you walk off of it. All effects are done on paper, and no other game looks like it. This is truly the best game on Vita right now, and every owner needs to play it.

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Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/16/2014

Posted in: PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: playstation, ps3, sly cooper, Sony, thieves in time, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: Sanzaru Games

Release Date: 2/5/2013

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The Sly series was one of the best on PS2. It was original, artsy, had slick controls, and had clever humor that you could only find on Sony’s consoles. After Sly 3, the series went into limbo during most of the PS3’s lifecycle with no sign of a new game insight. With Sucker Punch powering away at the Infamous series, all fans lost hope. Thieves in Time was finally announced with much rejoicing, but once the game arrived, everyone was scratching their heads. Why is this game almost identical to the previous three in every way, shape, and form?

If you’re familiar with the Sly games, you know how this game plays out. 5 chapters of various different villains that the gang must take down. Each chapter starts with an intro from Bentley the turtle (the computer and tech wiz). After this, Sly goes and takes pictures to gather feedback on what to do next. As soon as I saw this in the first chapter, I rolled my eyes. I knew I was in for another Sly game with the same gameplay we are now tired of. Sure, it’s quality, but I wanted evolution in the series. When I say nothing has changed, I mean absolutely nothing. The same guard paths can be followed: pickpocketing, the same yellow flashlights, the same small confusing hubs with 30 clue bottles, and a safe. You get the picture. However, the hubs aren’t as interesting to traverse, and I completely bypassed collecting any extras as it felt like a chore.

That’s not to say every little thing is the same. The clever and witty humor turned into Saturday morning cartoon slapstick humor with jokes written by 8-year-olds. No longer do you find the darker humor that adults can relate to. I didn’t laugh or smile at a single joke or line of dialogue. This is especially sad since you go back in time to find five of Sly’s ancestors, which opens a path for great dialog. Roichi is Sly’s Japanese Samurai ancestor, Tennessee Kid is his wild west ancestor, Bob is Sly’s very first ancestor from 10,000 B.C., Sir Gallenth is his medieval ancestor, and Salim is his Arabian Nights ancestor. These are actually interesting characters, but their personalities are limited by poor writing. No longer is the banter between Sly, Bentley, and Murray something you look forward to at every cutscene.

I also miss the more clever gameplay segments; now we just get a ton of boring mini-games and quick-time events. Hell, even the final boss is an easy, quick-time event fest. The most interesting part of the whole game is the bosses, which are rather challenging and fun to fight. The only new addition to the entire series are the new costume abilities. These add a special set of skills Sly needs to get through some missions. Apart from this, you can expect the same controls. It’s a crying shame for a series that is so dear to PlayStation fans.

With all of that said, the game looks pretty damn good on Vita, minus the occasional slowdown and the super long load times. Jumping from area to area was painful due to the 45-second or long loading screens. Some gameplay segments were shorter than the actual load times. This really hurt the game, as I set my Vita down to actually go do something while the game loaded. Long-term fans may either hate this game or love it. Newcomers will actually see it as a quality PlayStation title. As someone who has played the games since the very first one, I find it rather disappointing and almost a chore to play through.

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Dragon’s Crown

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/11/2014

Posted in: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles. Tagged: dragon's crown, jrpg, playstation, ps3, psvita, rpg, Sony, sorceress, vanillaware, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: Atlus

Developer: Vanillaware

Release Date: 8/6/2013

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Vanillaware is known for one of the hardest JRPGs on the PS2, Odin Sphere, and I was very excited upon hearing about the spiritual successor to that game. While Dragon’s Crown isn’t nearly as hard as that game (it’s much more forgiving), it still has a lot of challenges that await you. Dragon’s Crown’s biggest disappointment is its short length. There are almost no main quests and mainly side quests (about 50). Once you finish the game, you unlock a hard mode and then an inferno mode. Thankfully, the game can be played with up to four players, so it can be a blast.

The story is about a crown that has been taken by an ancient dragon. Your job is to return this crown to your kingdom and kill the dragon. The story is very light, and I know there could have been so much more here. But the super short length makes it impossible to write a better story. There are very few cutscenes and not much spoken dialogue (which is only done by a narrator). Once you jump into the game, you can attack, use items, cast spells, and use the right analog stick to move a hand around the screen to collect treasure. You always have a non-fighting thief with you who can pick locks on hidden doors and open chests. Sadly, you can’t change out your equipment during a mission (most levels can be passed in less than 10 minutes). However, at the end of each level is a boss, and they increase in difficulty throughout all 8 levels or so. Each level has two bosses at different levels for various players.

Once you finish a mission, you can return to town to appraise your items, bury or resurrect bones you find in levels for new AI partners, level up, acquire new quests, and buy runes. Runes are found throughout levels in pairs, which need to be matched with runes in your possession. These add various buffs to your party, which can turn the tide of a battle. Outside of those main things, there’s not much to do besides hit the level cap. The missions are extremely repetitive since you need to find nine talismans before facing the Ancient Dragon (that’s almost all there is to the entire main quest line), and once you are able to beat the Ancient Dragon (probably when you’re around level 30), you do it all over again on a harder difficulty. It gets kind of boring after a while and extremely tough towards the end. It’s best to go in with actual people since your AI partners can mess things up. Thankfully, unlike Odin Sphere, you have lives and can even pay to keep reviving with your coins. This alleviates some of the frustration.

I just wish there was so much more to this game. It feels so small and claustrophobic. The short levels, the nearly non-existent questline, and the story—but at least the characters you pick are fun to use, and the controls work well. The art itself is stunning, with beautiful water-color backdrops and crazy-looking enemies and bosses. This game is mainly designed for fans of the co-op arcade RPGs of yesteryear from Capcom. Not much of a story, but tons of combat, enemies to kill, and levels to acquire. If you want a story-heavy RPG like The Elder Scrolls or Fable, you won’t find that here.

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Final Fantasy X HD Remaster

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/27/2014

Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Switch, Xbox One. Tagged: ffx, final fantasy x, jrpg, playstation, ps2, ps3, psvita, rpg, Sony, square enix, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Square Enix

Release Date: 3/18/2014

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Final Fantasy X was a game in the series that really shifted things around. It broke some common JRPG rules and was a bit all over the place. This was the first JRPG I had ever beaten as a kid, and it was the first Final Fantasy I ever finished. I have a lot of fond memories of this game, and the HD Remaster brought a lot of those back.

The core game hasn’t really been touched, but US gamers will finally get a taste of the tougher international version, which adds an expert sphere grid and Dark Aeons, which are the toughest enemies in the game (some have millions of HP). Outside of the game, the game is still the same, with great characters that are memorable and beautiful locales. The story is a bit confusing at first, but very original, if not very deep. You play as Tidus, who is a young man sent forward in time hundreds of years into the future. His original home is now a sacred ruin, and a giant being called Sin is destroying humanity. Every 10 years, this sin comes back, and the calm ends. Another summoner must go on a pilgrimage to gather all the Aeons and take down Sin for another 10-year Calm. Your goal is to put a stop to this cycle. You gather your crew along the way to level up and put an end to all this nonsense.

Before you jump into this game, you must have a mindset from when the PS2 first launched. This game was fantastic back in the day and still holds up well. Most JRPG gamers will be thrown off by the Sphere Grid. There is no traditional leveling up where you gain levels. Instead, you acquire AP and get sphere points, which allow you to freely upgrade various attributes and skills for each character. The expert sphere grid allows you to use keys to go off your path and learn other abilities from other characters. This is a lot of fun and gives you total freedom over your character.

Outside of the sphere grid is the obvious combat. Yes, there are random battles, and some areas are so bad that you hit one every 2–3 seconds—literally. A maximum of three characters can battle at once with the freedom to swap out. It’s the usual JRPG turn-based battle system, but there are overdrives that are crucial to winning boss fights. Characters learn new drives as they battle. Aeons are also essential, but only Yuna can send them in. They are large, heavy hitters that will take away massive damage and can also be overdriven, which is probably the #1 technique for winning tougher boss fights. Like any other JRPG, learning enemies’ weaknesses and battling with magic is a must. Some bosses nearly turn into puzzles where you must cast Reflect on them so their healing spell bounces off of them onto you. Some bosses will cast status ailments that can cripple your entire party. If you don’t grind a bit and stay ahead of the game, you will struggle.

Outside of battle, there are the Cloister of Trials, which are a huge pain and aren’t fun at all. These are puzzles in which you place various spheres to unlock doors. Another huge pain is the Blitzball mini-game. This isn’t fun at all and requires math to actually play. It’s stiff, shallow, and just plain boring. I hated it as a kid, and I hate it even now that I know math better. It’s all nearly luck-based and a roll of the dice. You have almost no control over characters.

FFX is also full of pre-final boss content, but there are a lot of requirements to get this stuff. Ultimate weapons are a must-have to do more than the 9,999 HP damage limit. However, they require you to be in certain areas, acquire certain other items, or even get through harder areas that require getting through other areas just to get to that area. Sounds confusing? It is. I spent a good 15 hours just trying to figure all this out and could get only one optional Aeon (Yojimbo). Anima is another optional Aeon but requires getting through a tough boss with the three weakest characters (Tidus, Rikku, and Wakka) and then getting all the destruction spheres in every trial. It’s a huge pain, requires a lot of running around and backtracking, and can make you frustrated. You can also monster hunt, but this requires training a Chocobo (which is tough as nails to get through), and then capturing the toughest monsters in the game easily requires ultimate weapons, which require more backtracking. It’s a frustrating mess but also somehow extremely satisfying once you do it.

With the main game out of the way, let’s talk about visuals. The HD upgrade isn’t exactly what you think. Most of the game has been remodeled, and all the main characters are completely redone; however, many monsters and NPCs just had a few passes of texture filtering, and that’s it. It really looks ugly in spots, but it’s not so bad if you’ve played the game before. I just wish the Japanese voice track was on here since the English voice acting is so terrible and embarrassing to listen to.

Note: Shame on you, James Arnold Taylor, for your terrible voice acting in Tidus. You’ve done better! Like Ratchet from Ratchet & Clank, Gabriel Logan from the PSP Syphon Filters, and even Marty McFly from the Back to the Future adventure games!

Reviewed On

Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/16/2014

Posted in: PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: hatsune miku, playstation, project diva f, ps3, rhythm, Sony, vita, vocaloid. Leave a comment

Publisher: Sega

Developer: Sega

Release Date: 8/27/2013 (PS3), 3/4/2014 (Vita)

Available On

Vocaloid may not ring a bell to anyone outside of Japanophiles in the West. In Japan, Vocaloid is a major success, with dozens of albums and countless collaborations with various Japanese music artists. This is the first Project Diva game that has made it to the Western shores. Project Diva has a unique rhythm-based gameplay structure that is both tough as nails and addictive. Don’t let the cute “girly” visuals fool you. This game is for everyone who loves music or rhythm games.

Icons flash across the screen in different patterns, and you must press the corresponding face button. Arrows also require you to press the D-pad direction plus the color of that button. New in F are scratch stars, which also go into the technical zone segments, which are mandatory for getting higher grades at the end of songs. New on the Vita is the ability to use the touchscreen or rear touchpad to scratch these stars. This is so much easier than using the right thumbstick on the PS3. Technical zones are areas where you have to hit every note perfectly to get a huge boost in your score bar. Notes rank from cool, which is perfect, to awful, which is a complete miss. Cool and great scores will build up your multiplier. Safe or lower will drop it. Each song has two technical zones, with a chance zone near the end. New in F is the ability to build up a large star meter in your chance zone to unleash a mega scratch star to play an extra segment at the end. You must hit all of these to even get close to an excellent or perfect score.

These scores will unlock new items to buy in the shop, which is the other half of Project Diva F. You can outfit your diva’s room with new tables, chairs, decor, computers, etc. You can also unlock new costume pieces for your character. There are plenty of items to unlock, so you will be kept busy doing this long after unlocking all 30+ songs. The Vita features a new edit mode for making your own music videos or editing already-made videos and sharing them online. Project Diva F has a lot of content and will keep you coming back for higher scores or just to play your favorite songs.

When it comes to song selections, these aren’t as great or memorable as the PSP Project Diva games, but some songs are fantastic and memorable, while others are pretty lame. It’s a mixed bag, and everyone will have different favorites, but there are enough songs to please everyone who plays this game. The graphics are a step up from the PSP games, but I feel they could have been a bit better on the Vita. The textures look a bit muddy on Vita, but overall, the graphical style is very unique and spot-on when it comes to Vocaloid. I would have liked to have seen at least one pre-rendered video per song, but everything is performed in real-time.

As it is, Project Diva F is a fantastic game and the best rhythm game on Vita. If you love your J-Pop or want to venture out into something new, then take this game for a spin. Just be warned: the songs are all sung in Japanese, and the lyrics are in Japanese as well. Don’t bet on any localization because it wouldn’t be Vocaloid or Miku if it were.