Back up for a moment. Japanese Role Playing Games on the Wii are… Good?  And What’s this? Their from Japan, and their not first party titles?

Yes, it’s kind of funny to think it, but with the Wii’s last dying breath, it’s gets this explosion of well received Japanese games. Xenoblade Chronicles in particular is the one everybody’s raving about as the savior of the JRPG genre. I actually already did a post on the game shortly after the american release date was announced. It was on what to expect from the game when it came out, but it wasn’t an actual review. Now here’s my full opinion on the game now that i’ve beaten it. 

The Good: Huge world that looks and feels big-Great combat system- likable characters, action packed cutscenes, and an awesome sense of pacing-long adventure, with plenty of side quests to do.

The Bad: Finding side quest objectives sometimes feels like finding a needle in a haystack.

Here’s the thing. When people started talking about how JRPG’s weren’t doing so well, I didn’t know what they were talking about. Manly because I skip out on bad or disappointing games. But I have played two games, with stories that I think summed up the current state of affairs at the time. Dissidia: Final Fantasy, (Which is awesome.) And Final Fantasy XIII. But were not talking about those games right now are we? We’re here to talk about Xenoblade Chronicles, and all of it’s good bits. The first thing this game does right, it’s story. Do I even need to talk about it? Anybody reading this has properly played the game, and knows the story. If not, bite me. Nah, I’m just kidding. It’s about a Sixteen year old boy named Shulk, whose trying to discover the secrets of a legendary weapon known as the Monado. He lives in Colony 9 with a big guy named Ryan, and an obvious love interest named Fiora. When suddenly their village it attacked buy a machine race named the Mechon, who takeaway half the populous, causing the friends go of on a quest for vengeance. It’s a pretty basic story, but what sets apart, is the pacing. It doesn’t give you reasons, to like the characters, at the beginning, it shows their lives first. And when the reasons do come, they happen in the story. It becomes a roller coaster ride. Every time something happens in this game, it feel like somethings happening. It’s always building on itself, always adding something new. Holy Crap! This is like watching episodes of a good TV Show. You want to keep coming back, because you keep thinking to yourself: “What the F*ck is going to happen next.” It never feels slow, it never gets boring, it just feels great. It falls into the category of semi-serious, were you have a good cast of simple characters, getting into tense situations. And the way this game pulls it off is magnificent.

While the story steals the show for me, the world also deserves a gold medal if only for it’s size. It becomes apparent when you get to the Bionis Knee, which shows this huge sprawling grass land. I mean Look at it! This game is enormous!

A very good reason to explore the land, is the side quests. Which I love and hate at the same time. Once you except a side quest, there no way to track them. Also finding a side quest objective, sometimes feels like finding a needle in a haystack. Their a good excuse to go about exploring the vast open world, but they can be incredibly tedious at the same time. There is one good reason to do them. On the Monster Hunt, and Collection Quests; when you complete them you complete them on the spot. Literally. This confused me the first time I was playing the game. I found the objectives, I killed the monsters, and BAM! A completion screen came up saying, “CONGRATULATIONS!” I was like, “Really? I don’t have to go back to the quest giver to get my reward?” There other quests where you do have to return to the quest givers, but those are few, and the ones that are have their own non-voice acted stories to tell. Besides, completing Side-quests is a good way of getting EXP. So yeah, the side-questing is a bit of a mixed bag, but the rewards are worth it.

But what’s a good RPG without thumbling through the menues! And you will spend a lot of time in the menues, because there are Three major things to go through. First: The gem system. You can equip your weapons and gear with gems, that can do stuff like boost stats, add new abilities and add resistances.  Second: The gear and loot you pick up along the way. It actually feels like RPG loot, because it doesn’t just boost all your stats, it boosts specific stats. Stuff like Strength, Speed, Health. Your not just getting stronger, your characters are getting stronger it specific ways. Also having the gear visually change the way your characters look, even in the cutscenes, is a nice touch. Three: The skill tree’s. What makes them interesting is that they criss-cross into each other. Once the characters gain enough XP, they learn different skills, by learning of each other. You will do a lot of busy work in these menues, but the boosts you can gain, are well worth it.

Wow, all this and I haven’t even talked about the combat system. When you first look at the combat screen, it looks like cluster-cus. Then when you play the game, it’s not as complicated as it looks. All the characters have abilities called Arts, and an ultimate ability called a Talent. Here’s were it gets good, you can do massive amounts of damage depending of were you attack. Positioning is very important, because the effectiveness of how you us your arts can make a big impact on the battle. If your fighting an enemy that is higher level than you, and you just spam your arts, your gonna find yourself backed into a corner, because the arts take time to regenerate. There’s also stuff like ailments, buffs, and those stats that I mentioned before. But the best part about it is that you never feel like you don’t know what your doing. Your never going through long menues in the battle, or using a depleting magic meter, it all relies on what you decide to do in the heat of the fight. The real problem that I have, is a personal one. I’m not a fan of Auto-Attack, and there are some battles against weaker enemies were you can just stand there as the characters attack. It does get a little bit repetitive, and the characters constant one-liners may or may not annoy, but the share depth to it, is what makes it worthwhile.

So in the end, what we’ve got is game with a cool story, a world that looks and feels huge, a great combat system, and overall just fun time. This review isn’t even scratching the surface. And if your reading this, then you’v properly already played it. If you haven’t then, then I recommend it even if your not a fan of JRPG’s. Most of those little things that have plagued the genre are gone. None of the characters are emo or pretentious, the music is great, there’s a fast travel system, the RPG elements are deep. It’s just awesome. I’d say go play it, but chances are, you already have. If you haven’t, then it’s well worth dusting off your Nintendo Wii to play.

Score: 9.0

Next I’m going to be reviewing the other rainfall games, The Last Story, and Pandora’s tower. See you there.

The things people do with F*ckin’ legos.

Unfortunately I haven’t read the books. So maybe my rant on the color style was unjustified, but I wasn’t even interested in this movie, until it came out in theaters. Literally I hadn’t even seen the trailer for this, so I was walking in almost completely blind.

I’m a little split on this movie, and here’s why. I didn’t like the first half, but I loved the second half.

Here’s my problems with the first half. The backstory was contrived. From what I can tell, there was this war that happened, and a lot people died and it was tragic. But the why we remember this… is by sending teenagers into a arena to kill each other? Huh?
There were also some bad lines, the camera was shaky, and the editing felt jarring.
I also didn’t like how the movie looked. When they get chosen, they get sent to this big city, where the hunger games take place. I do understand what it’s trying to convey. It’s glamour city, that it’s the home of mass media giants. But design of the people is ridiculous. The color pallet is childish, and distracting. Almost everybody has their hair dyed some sort of over-the-top color, and the women have there lips glittered the same way. When I imagine a world like this, I expect it to look more professional. This looks like someone just throw a bucket of paint over everything.

So yeah, don’t like the first half. But the second half is great!

When The Hunger Games start, it’s like a new movie has started, and it is awesome. It’s Brutal, It’s Emotional, It’s Involving, It’s Paced really well. I was genially excited to see how Katniss was going to get through this. It’s not said  out loud, but you can tell that she doesn’t want to kill, even through she has to. As the viewer, I wanted to see how she going to get of this, but still keep her humanity intact. And on top of that, not all of the other contestants are bad people, there just as scared as she is. That’s exciting, and it leads me into the other thing I liked about this movie. The Main character.
It’s become a cliche that characters in science fiction-action movies, start of as assholes. Katniss is likable from the begging. She’s sympathetic, yet takes her situation seriously. She compassionate, yet strong. And on top of that, the movie does something that I love to see, Involvement. I love movies that put the audience through what the main character is going to though. The Hunger games does that rather well.

So yeah, I hate bits of it, and I love bits of it.
The first half is mediocre, and mostly forgettable.
The second half is a grim ride, well worth taking.

My New Youtube Video. My Review of the Circle Pad Pro.

If you hate Modern Warfare 3, then check out my review of the campaign.

In all my years of gaming, i’ve come to realize something; I’m not a competitive multiplayer guy. It isn’t because of the Xbox live kids, or the urge to “own” noobs online, or any of that mumbo-jumbo, it’s the simple fact that I’m not good at it. As such, I’ve told myself to just rent shooters for there campaigns, because those are, of course, going to be good. Well I just finished Modern Warfare 3, and it is one of the most empty, uninvolving experiences I have ever played in my life.

The Good: Captain Price is still badass - Some moments are a little clever - Ending wraps up the story nicely.

The Bad: Half the set piece moments relie on On-rails sections - Most of the other set pieces aren’t that inspired - Story throws everything at you at once, with little to back it up - Shooting tons of stupid enemies through narrow corridors gets boring, graphics haven’t changed - (And have a few small bugs) - Oh yeah… it’s short.

Being that I played this for the campaign, I wasn’t expecting much given the games recent history. If you know the game history, then what you should be expecting is big action scenes, a rushed story, and a short campaign.

The story picks up, right were MW2 left off, with Soap being hurried through to medical, in some random village in africa that I never got the name of. It’s a good start, but then it cuts away to a new team called Delta Force, were you start playing as a new guy named Frost. Great, take as away from the only characters who we actually care about. Frost is lead by a guy named Sandman, and with him is Truck and Grinch. Sandman, Frost, Truck and Grinch; That doesn’t at all scream saturday morning cartoon. And in case your wondering, the entire story is like this. Whenever a plot point happens, one of the other three or four military teams happens to be in that location to resolve it.

The only team I really care about is the Task force. Why? Because of Captain Price, and because he’s the one character left who I actually care for. Even if you hate MW you can’t hate Price, he has one of the best video game beards ever. It’s just a shame that everything else around him is just plain stupid. In fact when we get back to Price and Soap, an action scene is breaking out. But instead on playing as either Soap or Price, you play as a new guy, a Russian named Yuri. Who is this guy? Why does he hate Makorov? We don’t get any time with him because, as soon as we step into his shoes, the village their hiding out in gets attacked by bad guys.

And speaking of bad guys, lets talk about the gameplay. It is so… incredibly… booorrring. And i’m not even talking your guns still having no weight to them, or the snap targeting that makes killing easy. Whenever you enter a new area, enemies will just flood in through the one gate that’s available. This pretty much means, that their lining up for you to shoot them. And yes, I know they take cover when they get the chance. But guess what, they also try switching cover, which just gives you even more opportunity to gun them down. The only thing keeping this campaign from being easy, (I was playing it on normal/regular) Is the fact that there are lots of them. Lot’s of them, to add to the monotony, of having to shoot all of them. It’s pretty much just clean out work, through linier corridors, with all the explosions happening in the background. That’s another thing I hate, this is supposed to be World War 3, but when you get down to it, most of the explosions happening in the background are just spectacle. No I don’t care about the draw distance, it’s still just happening in the background. I have never before in my life played a game with such a big scale, and yet I with such little involvement.

If your one of the guys who likes MW3, then your properly reading this and thinking: “But that’s not what it’s about, it’s big large scale action scenes, and epic set pieces.” Fair argument, but there’s one massive problem. Half of the set pieces relie on On-rails segments, while the other half relies on gunner segments. I don’t mind having a turret segment every once in a while, because they do help break up the pace. But I swear to God, there must about half a dozen on-rails segments strewn thought-out the game. And no, the ones were you can still use your guns are not an exception. Those still count! The gunner segments are just has guilty. There’s only so many times you can rain death down upon the enemy from the seat of a UAV until you realize you can’t die… at all. It was good in the first Modern Warfare because it only happened once, and it was a fun unexpected surprsie. But here they overstay their welcome.

So is there anything I like? Actually yes. A game like this has got something good about it. And there are a few moment were a little clever. An action packed, but subtle moment that I liked was when you get caught in a sandstorm in a village. Price, Soap and Yuri are trying escape from a village, while Africans try to gun them down. They have to do it before a sandstorm hits. However their ride gets shoot down, and the sandstorm blinds them, forcing them to walk with limited vision. I liked this moment because it had me at a disadvantage without feeling cheap or frustrating. Another moment I liked, that happened earlier in the game, was the drone controle segment. You get to take controle of a drone with a mini-gun on top of it. This is not an on-rails segment. You can move forward, left, right and backwards, as you gun down the enemies. Wait a minute? The enemies, why are there so many of them. How did Makarov get so many followers? How did he start World War 3? Why does he want to blow up America? Because he’s a terrorist? SOMEBODY HELP!!! THE PLOT HOLES!!! THEY BURN!!!

‘Experiencing technical difficulties’

Sorry about that. Well you kill Makorov’s army throughout the game and I know i’m spoiling this but I really don’t care.  You do get to kill Makorov. Even though I i’m spoiling this, I don’t think it matters, everyone knows it. And for as abrupt as it is, I do kind of like the ending for two reasons: 1: You get to play as price for the final level. 2: Killing Makorov means the end of the story for the MW trilogy. If they do annonce Modern Warfare 4, their going to be pulling it out of their asses.

And that’s what the whole 4-5 hours are like. I can accept that they didn’t have a lot of time to change things, I can except that they didn’t have a lot of time for the story. What I can’t except, is how lazy it feels anyway. Even if you had just year to write a 5 hour long story, You can think of up something better than this. The levels are overly scripted corridors, that make little use of the huge setting. The set pieces are uninspired. And it’s just an all around mess.

There’s simply not a lot of reason to play a game that throws so much at you, and gives you so little in the process. They say it’s supposed to be like Michel Bay, but I’m going to say it, Michel Bay is subtle compared to this.

3.5/10

You’d think with Psychic powers, I could get a better haircut.

I didn’t know Joss Whedon was working on this, but it looks weird. I like it.

Short, Sweet, and I can’t wait for the actuel movie!

This tune is awesome. Looking forward to Darksiders 2.

(Feel free to skip this first paragraph.) Get this, I’m a fan of JRPG’s, I’m not a fan of the Square Enix kind. Whenever I play one of the numbered Final Fantasy games, I often get halfway through them, before I decide: “This isn’t working for me, this just isn’t offering anything.” That being said, Final Fantasy 7 is awesome.

I live in New Zealand, hence I live in a European country, hence I’ve got Xenoblade Chronicles, hence Iv’e been playing it. And now I’ve heard that it’s coming to the US. So if your anxious to get your hands to it, here’s a few things you might wanna know. As well as some parts of my own personal opinion

1: You can go anywhere:

Lets be honest here, Gamers like to explore, they like to go any direction and find adventure. Xenoblade Chronicle gives a big land to explore that gets even bigger as you progress through the story. There’s a lot to find in the world of the Bionis. There’s items to collect in the form of blue light, there’s monsters to slay, and towns that give out quests. Yep, the game has side quests… lots… and lots… of side quests. Some are saying the Xenoblade Chronicles is like mini MMO. There right. Just except all the side quests, go out into the world and explore until you find what your looking for.

Watch out for collection quests. Every time I accept one, it always feels like it’s telling me to find the item that’s hardest look for. It’s also like a mini MMO, because there’s monster slaying quests to. Here’s one of the games master strokes, when you complete a fetch quest you complete it on the spot, you don’t need to go back and turn it in. You just get the experience and money, and your on your way. It makes grinding a lot more fun, rewarding, and encourages exploration.

If there’s one problem that open world games have had, it’s getting from one side of the world to another. Xenoblade Chronicles addresses this problem by having a fast travel system. Whenever you discover a landmark/location, you can just bring up the map select a destination and your there in one short loading screen. Pretty much everything that should have been in JRPG’s long ago is here, and it’s compellingly modernized.

2: The Battle System, it does something!:

If you hated the tedious battles of FFXIII, this is the complete opposite. Battles happen in real time, which means something is always happening. It manages to strike that exact point of being simple to play, but deep at the same time. You don’t use potions, items, or anything from the inventory during battle. It’s all handled by using arts, you scroll through the list of abilities your leader can use. Select the appropriate one for the situation, and take a huge chunk of your opponents health away from your enemy. 

Unfortunately you can’t use arts from any of party members outside the Tri-Attack. But then again, this is probably idea as it completely eliminates micro-management. The one real complaint I have with the system, is that is uses Auto-Attack. I apologize, to all Dragon Age fans, but Auto-Attack is a primitive, un-involving way of using a basic attack. But I am willing to forgive it, when the core of the battles are so much fun.

3: You can RPG this:

Like I said earlier, Xenoblade Chronicles takes a lot of well needed queues from Western RPG’s. You can chose who you want the party leader to be, collect items and equipment, and customize your characters stats, all from the first hour of the game.

It’s worthy to mention that some pieces of equipment emphasize some stats over others. At first I didn’t get, I wanted an item that would just boost the stats I currently had. But now I can see what they were trying to do. This system lets you boost the necessary stats of the character who uses them. There’s also a lot to customize, you have to equip armor for your characters head, arms, feet, torso and weapons. And on top of that, whatever you decide to put on your character appears in the in-game cutscenes. Xenoblade chronicles truly is the Wii’s answer to Dragon Age. The only thing I wish you could customize is the weapon the main character uses. Early into the story, the main character gets weapon called the Monado. The one little fault with the RPG system, is that you no control over its progression. It gains new powers as you progress through the story. Which is okay, but some customization for it would be nice. Other than that, Xenoblade is an RPG to the max.

The final thing to mention is skill tree’s. They are in the game, but there very simple to use. Each character has three of them and there basically battle roles. You select one and it automatically gains experience as you fight. 

4:  Epic Story!:

Lots of people have been saying that the quality of JRPG stories has been diminishing. I wouldn’t know, because I’ve been avoiding the bad ones. So when people mention JRPG cliches I usually don’t know what there talking about, because those are the ones that I haven’t played. Why am I bringing this up? Because people have been saying that this story starts of cliched and then gets better.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. It’s about a sixteen year old boy, who’s the only one who can wield a mythical weapon called the Monado. He has to use the Monado to defeat obligatory bad guys called the Mechon. A race of war machines who want to kill all Homs… because… their evil. Oh and buy the way, the people aren’t called Humans, their called Homs. And their all super British.

Despite all this, The story of XenoBlade Chronicles still manages to be good. Why? Because things happen in it. The main problem with FFXIII’s story is that is that it was very dialog heavy, and not much happened in the overall story. And then when something did happen… did you really care by this point? Xenoblade Chronicles is the exact opposite. Every time a cutscene starts, it feels like the story is moving. It manages to strikes that perfect balance, of having simple moments, emotional moments and even some riveting action moments. It throws new characters, new twists, new plot elements, on a really consistant basis. I’m about 30 hours in, and the only time this story slows down, is when I stop to do the side quests. It truly is one of the most well paced stories I’ve ever had the pleasure of sitting through. It’s a form of story telling that I like to call the Great Adventure, It’s when you relie on what’s happening in the story, moving from set piece to set piece, and letting the characters move it forward. Xenoblade Chronicles pulls of this form of story telling beautifully. You are going to love it.

That’s all I have to say about Xenoblade Chronicles. If you haven’t played it already, and your a fan of RPG’s like this, then your going to love this one.

Oh Yeah, lets watch that trailer again.

http://youtu.be/N7Xc6in86rs