Remembering Silent Hill

Its almost Halloween again. I love this time of the year. Its a great time to play spooky games too. One of my all-time favorites is Silent Hill. I wish I could say I'm playing it again, but I don't have a copy of it for my PS1. I do, however, have a great memory for video games and I thought now would be a great time to talk about why Silent Hill is one of the best, if not the best, spooky games out there!



At the start of the game, you arrive in a small town called Silent Hill. You are trapped there and your daughter has gone missing. You're looking around for her everywhere. The town is covered in an eerie fog, Something could jump out at you at any moment. Silent Hill starts slow though. You are not attacked by anything at first....when it does happen....



Its really disturbing! As you can see in the picture above, there are flying creatures, but there also things that walk on the ground and chase you. There's all kinds of crazy things in this town...



Like the other world that you find yourself in once and awhile. If you think Silent Hill is disturbing, than you should check out Silent Hill's darker, dirtier underworld.



The graphics on Silent Hill haven't aged well, but the game is still super creepy/spooky. Its still a very intense game. It also has a lot of interesting puzzles to solve. But the truth is, fighting the monsters and running away from them is the real meat and potatoes of the game!

Anyway, I hear they did a remake of the first Silent Hill on the Wii. I never got the chance to play that one. I wonder how good was. I really need to check that out sooner or later.

Sure, its Halloween now, but you know what: Spooky/creepy games are good any time of the year!

If you haven't played the original Silent Hill, I recommend checking it out. They did sequels to Silent Hill, but if you ask me, none of those were as great as the first one!



HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!

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All of the above pictures were found here on google.

I'll be back on Monday!

Stella Glow Demo Impressions

Yesterday, I downloaded the demo of Stella Glow, an upcoming strategy rpg from Atlus and Sega, from the 3DS eshop. I decided I'd write about the demo today. Here's what I thought of it...

The Stella Glow demo is so much better than the Legend of Legacy demo. Of course, the two games are very very different from each other, but the comparison comes from them both being released by Atlus.



Stella Glow is a tactical strategy rpg, similar to Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics. In the demo (and the actual game), you move the characters around a grid based area. The game is turn-based and the very handy turn order is placed at the bottom of the top screen. I really liked where the turn order was placed and I enjoyed the battle system a lot over all. You move the characters by selecting move in the menu and then use the D-Pad to move. The D-pad is pretty responsive. The analog stick is used to look around the battlefield, but that felt a little stiff. There is another way to look around the battle too. You can scroll through the good guys and the bad guys individually. I liked this a lot.

The battles themselves are pretty quick and you don't have to wait too long for turns. You have everything you'd expect find in the battle menu: Attack, Skills, Items and its all laid out really well. I like how the game shows you gaining experience and leveling up in battle! Also I found that the bottom screen was really useful!




Stella Glow's use of the bottom screen is brilliant! You can look a various characters status & skills at the bottom screen or switch to the mission objectives. I also liked how you could use the touchscreen to check out what the character's weapons, equipment, skills, and more do! This is all extremely useful for every battle. It really helps you plan out what you want to do. The whole battle system is really great and I wish that we had been given a little more time with it.

I thought all of the battles in the demo were good, although they were a bit on the easy side and the demo is more like a tutorial than an actual part of the larger game. I do wish the demo had given us a glimpse of the game's world map and provided a couple of random battles to play. Also your demo progress doesn't transfer over to the full game like Legend of Legacy. That said, the demo battles are fun and give you a preview of what to expect in the full game.

 Oh and I really love this game's graphics!



The artwork in Stella Glow is amazing. I especially love the in-game graphics, with its small characters, beautiful backgrounds, awesome close up battle animations, and fantastic 3D. But the character design artwork looks good too.



I'm usually not a fan of anime-like characters but Stella Glow's character designs and other artwork is just so very good. I was also impressed by the animated cutscenes in the demo!

I  really liked the characters in this game too. All of the good guys are very likeable and the bad guys are rotten to the core, but also complex and interesting.  I also thought the game's voice acting was good! I was actually surprised the demo had so much voice acting (a very nice surprise). I was never bored by the demo's story. In fact, I did a second playthrough of the demo where I skipped all of the cutscenes and the demo just wasn't as interesting. I love the battles, but the story & battles work so well together and make the demo well worth playing. I really want to know what happens next in the actual game too!

It looks like the game will have even more places to explore and lots to do. I've heard that the full game has multiple endings, 40-60 hours of gameplay, and lots of sidequests! I enjoyed the demo a lot and I'm pretty sure I want the game sooner or later.

I highly recommend downloading this demo if you're a strategy rpg fan!

Have you played the Stella Glow demo? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments!

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All of the above pictures come from Google.

I'll be back on Friday with a Halloween blog entry!

Yo-Kai Watch Demo Impressions

I decided to download the Yo-Kai Watch demo from the 3DS eshop yesterday. I honestly didn't expect much from the game. I thought it would be a lot like Pokemon. And while it does have that 'Gotta catch 'em all" aspect to it...well....its quite a bit different. I'm thankful for that because I'm not a Pokemon fan. Yo-Kai Watch, on the other hand....

I LIKED A LOT!

Yep, I enjoyed this demo so much. Why?

Well, what first hit me when I started the game was how great the graphics are. Level 5 is the developer behind the title, so I should have known that would be the case. The graphics are really excellent. And if you turn the 3D on, man, those graphics are even better. Level 5 did a great job with the 3D. There is a lot depth to the demo, but there is also a lot of POP OUT, especially with the enemies, bugs, and fish in the game.

As for the gameplay, I found it very addictive. You have to look all over the place for Yo-Kai. This aspect of the game reminds me of an image search game. Sort of a Where's Waldo? Expect that the Yo-Kai are invisible. You go into a first person mode to search for the Yo-Kai (most of the time) and the way the graphics are done more realistically in this mode is pretty cool! I also liked how you can hunt for bugs (and fish!) and find other stuff too in this first person mode. There seems like there's a lot to do in Yo-Kai Watch.

Oh and I haven't even talked about the battle system. I wasn't sure if I liked the battle system at first. I grew to like it a lot though. Yo-Kai Watch has an auto-battle system BUT you have a wheel that you use via the touch screen to switch different party members into the battle and you can help out with the attacking by selecting Target, Purify, or the special Soul powers (there is also item listed but thats not available in the demo). The targeting option helps you direct the Yo-Kai to specific targets and the purify option is to get them out of being cursed. The soul powers are definitely the best part of the battle system.

The soul powers are VERY impressive visually. You always have to go through some sort of touch screen mini-game to power up these powers. The toughest of these mini-games is the tracing mini-game because the more complicated symbols are bit harder to trace. Overall, though, I really liked these touch screen mini-games.

The touch screen, in fact, is used really well in this demo. You can use it for the entire demo if you want, but I prefered using the analog stick to walk around!

There is a lot to see and do in this demo. There are a lot of Yo-Kai to find and fight in the demo, plus bugs, fish, and other items to find. The bugs, fish, and items don't do anything in the demo but I really enjoyed the mini-game you played to get the bugs and fish.

I could go on forever about this demo, but I won't! If you haven't tried out the demo, I highly recommend it. Its a lot of fun. I'm seriously considering buying this game sooner or later. I would have never thought I'd be interested in this game at all. Thats why I love demos. You just never know what you'll like sometimes until you get the chance to try it.

Have you tried the Yo-Kai Watch demo? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments!

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Next week, I'll have a blog entry on Wednesday instead of Monday. I'm doing this because the Stella Glow demo comes out on Tuesday. I'll write up my impressions of that demo and have that for you on Wednesday. I'll try to do something Halloween themed for Friday next week! See you all then.

Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes Demo Impressions

Last week, Nintendo was emailing people with codes for Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes! My dad got some codes from Nintendo first and shared them with us. Then, my mom got codes and finally I got codes
(which I shared on twitter). It was a great and unexpected surprise getting to play the demo. And now I can tell you all about my experience...

The Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes demo has unlimited tries. That means that the demo will never stop working. Unfortunately, the demo does not include Single Player or Download Play. This means that you have to have three people to play with locally to play the demo anytime. Thankfully, I have two other people in my house that own a 3DS! My mom and dad downloaded the demo too and we played the game together.

At first, we were figuring out the controls and so we didn't work too great as a team. Eventually, we started to get the hang of the controls. Since we were playing locally, we could easily communicate with each other about where we wanted to go and what we were doing. The local multiplayer worked pretty good for the most part. I did see a little bit of slow down/loading one time, but overall, the wireless play worked good. We even managed to beat the dungeon eventually!

There was only one dungeon available for local play and only a few costumes. It was a pretty stripped down experience. But, that said, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed my time playing the local multiplayer and it made me want the game!

And then I played the Online Multiplayer....

The online multiplayer was only available for three days: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And only at certain times during the day. On each day, though, I got to play the demo online a bit. On the first day, I had a team once that knew what it was doing. On the second day, it was about the same. On the third day, well, let me back up and talk about the other days first.

My experience on the first and second day were mixed. My team mates often appeared clueless, but I suppose they might have felt the same way about me. The online multiplayer let you choose between three dungeons and a few more costumes than local play did. Oh and you could only play with RANDOM PEOPLE. You couldn't play with friends at all. This really disappointed me. I was hoping to play the demo online with a friend. Instead, I had to play with people I didn't know or trust. And we couldn't talk to each other because there was no voice chat! The communication symbols that you are provided with worked on a basic level, but not as well as voice chat.

Still, we worked alright together sometimes. I guess it all depended on if the player was experienced or a newbie. Playing online with random people can be an interesting experience to say the least. Though, sometimes it was just a complete mess!!

Speaking of a mess, the online play wasn't always a smooth experience either. I got booted off a couple of times or had connection errors. This was a common theme throughout the weekend.

Though, it was at its worst on Sunday. On Sunday morning, I played some Triforce Heroes online play. One time it was lagging so much that it was barely playable. The slow down on the demo was terrible. And another time, it worked fine, but I had a connection error at the end of the level.

I have to say that the online play did not give me much confidence in Triforce Heroes. Yes, I'm still excited about the game, but I'm worried that online play will be pretty bad. I'm hoping that this demo will help Nintendo improve the actual game. We'll see. I still hope to get the game this year (probably Christmas). I'm likely to play single player and download play a lot more than online. But I've heard there is going to be an online competitive multiplayer mode! So I gotta try that! Hopefully Nintendo will fix the online....

Anyway, I hope to play more of the local multiplayer soon. I enjoyed that the most!

Finally, before I go, here's a bit of a surprise!

The online portion of the demo is done now (but who knows! It might return someday. Splatoon's Global Testfire did).

Still, there may be someone out there who wants these DEMO CODES for Local Play:

B0HGSQDN5DQ6CSN7

B0HF5Y565CPKLQ2W

If someone gets them, I hope you enjoy the demo! These are the last of the codes from my mom. Sorry I didn't have three to share. I'm hopeful that someone can use them.

Thank you Nintendo. It was great to try the game out. Can't wait to play the full game!

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The picture from the start of the article was taken from here.

I'll be back on Friday! See you then.

I'm Playing the Original Metal Gear Solid Again and Loving It

SNAKE? SNAKE? SNAAAAAAAAAKE?!

This is the sound of Solid Snake dying. I'm hearing this a lot lately.

Awhile back, I got a Playstation 1 again. I had kept a lot of my Final Fantasy games but nothing else. Then a really great friend (CARL!) came to my rescue. He sent me Metal Gear Solid in the mail.

Now I've mentioned in previous blog entries that I didn't like this game originally. It wasn't till I played Twin Snakes on the Gamecube that even appreciated the story. I did have the chance to play original after I played Twin Snakes and I liked it better (but still didn't love it). Fast forward to now and I have to tell you something: I LOVE THIS GAME. What was wrong with me? Why didn't I like this game originally? I'm not sure. Maybe it was because I sucked at it. Not much as changed there. I'm still not very good at this game. But I'm really loving the gameplay and the long cutscenes/codec conversations too.



Man do those cutscenes and codec conversations go on forever...

I do love the humor that is found in them though (Meryl's number is on the CD CASE!!!! lol). And the voice acting in this game is EXCELLENT. Especially David Hayter, but everyone else does a great job too.



Graphics wise, Metal Gear Solid doesn't look great during the cutscenes, but I think the actual gameplay holds up pretty well. I think it has a lot to do with the overhead view. When you get a close up view during cutscenes or looking around corners, you can see the imperfections more. But with the overhead view, everything looks pretty good.

I didn't like the overhead view back in the day. I'm really liking it now. In fact, I'm enjoying this game a lot more than I originally did.

Can't wait to see play it even more!

Thanks Carl. :)

SNAAAAAAAKE!

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All of the above pictures were found here on google.

I'll be back on Monday with my Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes demo impressions!

I didn't like Bravely Default (Massive Spoilers for the game)

If you haven't played Bravely Default or haven't got very far into it, don't read the rest of this article.

This article contains MASSIVE SPOILERS about Bravely Default....
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With Legend of Legacy right around corner and another rpg recently out on the eshop (Chronus Arc), I started to think about recent rpgs I loved. There really are not as many I wish there were....

I wish I could say, for instance, that I loved Bravely Default. I don't love it. In fact, I grew very disappointed in this game.

MASSIVE SPOILERS (I've warned you three times now)










Later in Bravely Default, you have to defeat three or four dungeons and then you get sucked back in time....where you have to defeat those dungeons AGAIN. Now if this only had happened once, that would have been alright I suppose. But it happens again and again. I'm not sure how many times it happens, because I ended up giving up on the game. It was not fun to repeat this dungeons over and over and over. And they got HARDER each time.

In fact, it just felt like the developer was trying to pad the end of the game to make it longer. I think the game would have been perfect if it had been over once you beat those dungeons the first time. Would the game have been short? Maybe. SO WHAT. Nothing says that every rpg has to be at least 100 hours. Yes, I love those 100 hour or more rpgs, but there's something to be said for short rpgs too. Especially ones that are as beautiful and well designed as Bravely Default. And it is a good looking game with a great battle system. I like the job system too!

But repeating things over and over and over really ruined the game for me. I got bored. I stopped playing. I don't get why people like this game so much. I think Square Enix failed on this one. They've created so many great games, many of them for the DS and 3DS. What happened here? Why couldn't Bravely Default have been as great as Dragon Quest 9 or even as good as Kingdom Hearts for the 3DS? I just don't get it.

And Bravely Second is on the way and it'll likely come to the U.S.

You can count me out Square Enix. No way do I want to play a sequel.

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What do you guys want to see from me next week? Indie game preview? Another rant? Please let me know in the comments or via @df2506 on twitter!

The Land of the Betas

I used to own a Playstation 3. I don't anymore, but sometimes I still miss it.

One of the things I like the most about the Playstation 3 was the various betas (online demos that can be downloaded to help test multiplayer servers) they did for online multiplayer games. This was always a cool, free thing that Sony did. Sometimes it was a tricky to get into a beta, but I always seemed to have a bit of luck with it. I got into the LittleBigPlanet betas and a few other betas too.

And now that I'm just a Nintendo gamer, I find myself thinking about the Sony betas and sighing. I wish Nintendo would do more betas. They did the Splatoon one awhile back, but its too bad they didn't do one for Smash Bros, Mario Kart, and other online games. If you think about it, Devil's Third could have benefitted from one too!

Project Treasure, an upcoming MMO for Wii U, will have a beta in Japan. I have no idea if the beta will come over here or to Europe. It would be amazing if it did.

Nintendo really could benefit from more betas (and demos too). They would help test out the online servers AND give players an early taste of an upcoming game. This could particularly help with some hard sell games, like Devil's Third, Project Treasure, heck, it could even help sell games like Mario Tennis (if it has online).

One of the things I've noticed with Nintendo is that they don't do demos for their games too often. And when they do release a demo, most of the demos are for 3DS games and not Wii U. Wii U demos are released for stores like Gamestop or Best Buy or events like E3, but its rare for Nintendo to bring out a demo on the Wii U eshop.

So yes, it would be even more rare to see something like a beta on the eshop. Demos and Betas could be really helpful to Nintendo though. Games like Xenoblade and Fatal Frame seem like good picks for demos and there are plenty of upcoming online enabled games that could use a server test.

Nintendo has had some trouble with online games in the past. They are getting better at their online, but betas could help them get the most out of their online server testing.

I wonder how that Splatoon Beta went. If it was a success, perhaps we'll see more betas from Nintendo in the future. I'd love to see that. Nintendo is all about fun and surprises with its fans. I could see them wanting to reach as wide an audience as possible. Hopefully they'll be more open to betas in the future!

What do you all think? Would you like to see Nintendo do more betas/demos on the Wii U and 3DS? Let me know in the comments.