Month: August 2013

1311: Shorty and the EZ-Mouse

Aug 21 -- Bust A Groove“Kitty-ENN. Versus. GAAAAAS-OOOOOOOOO!”

…

“I will never ever run away, I will live to fight another day, I will make you re-a-lise, I’m always here, right by your side, now our love is sanc-ti-fied, I’m here to bust this groove.”

…

“It is me or is the timing off a little bit?”

“Nah. I’m just more skilled than you are.”

“No, I seriously think the timing’s off.”

“C’mon, man, stop being a sore loser.”

“No! I’m serious! I’ll go and get my PlayStation right now and prove it.”

“Fine. Go ahead. And you’ll see that I’m just better.”

“All right. See you in a bit.”

…

“So, do you believe me, now?”

“…Fine. All right. I believe you.”

—

That incident actually happened. The game in question was Bust-A-Groove, a PlayStation offering that helped spawn (or at least popularise) the now all but dormant music game genre. This was no Guitar Hero precursor, though; Bust-A-Groove was very much its own thing, and there hasn’t really been a game quite like it since. (Well, apart from Bust-A-Groove 2, but that’s sort of a given.)

Bust-A-Groove was a peculiar blend of fighting game (sort of) and rhythm-based music game. Each “bout” was a one-on-one competition between two of the weird and wonderful characters, and victory was determined by whoever the camera was closest to at the end of the bout. (Yes, really.) In order to attract the camera towards yourself, you have to correctly punch in the directional inputs on the screen and then tap either the circle or X button in time with beat “4” of a bar. If you press the triangle button instead of O or X, you’ll unleash an attack on your opponent, which will interrupt their flow if it hits them, but which they can dodge if they tap the square button instead of O or X.

That’s it. That’s all the game was, and yet it was massively addictive, thanks at least in part to the magnificent soundtrack. Each character, much like in a fighting game, had their own stage with unique crazy animations going on in the background, and each stage had its own piece of music that told you something about the character — it was implied that, in most cases, the “owner” of the stage was singing the song, and it helped give both the game and its cast a huge amount of personality.

Also it ended with you defeating a giant robot by standing on a rooftop and dancing at it, which was awesome.

The timing issue I alluded to above came from the fact that, at the time Bust-A-Groove came out, I was struggling on with a Japanese PlayStation, and consequently, in order to play European games, I had to prop the system’s lid open with a biro lid and a bit of Blu-Tac, boot it up with a Japanese game in, whip the Japanese disc out when it stopped spinning quite so quickly then quickly swap in the European disc. (I later acquired an actual European PlayStation after I completely knackered the lens on the Japanese system by doing this all the time. I promptly chipped it so that I could play import games. Still one of my favourite consoles of all time; I wish I still had it.)

Anyway, the fact that a Japanese PlayStation is designed to run on a 60Hz display and a European PlayStation was designed to run on a 50Hz display (this was the pre-HD era, folks) meant that the Japanese PlayStation ran slightly faster than the European game was expecting it to, meaning that the on-screen button prompts did not line up properly with the beat of the music. Having grown accustomed to this naturally, I didn’t notice it, but my friend Woody, with whom I was playing the game’s two-player mode, was immediately thrown off by it. (We were both absolute S-Rank Bust-A-Groove players, so every match should have ended in stalemate; he was perturbed to find himself repeatedly losing due to being unaccustomed to my PlayStation’s wonky timing.)

Not sure why I shared that little anecdote, but whatever. Bust-A-Groove was great… and I am now searching Amazon and eBay for cheap copies.

1310: Nice Job, Sony

It was a day of press conferences at Gamescom in Germany today — always a long, tiring day, so forgive me if tiredness gets the better of me and I either start making ridiculous typos or fall asleep on my keyboard.

Out of the three conferences we saw today (or heard about second-hand in the case of Microsoft, who weren’t streaming their event), for my money, Sony’s was clearly the best. For my particular tastes, anyway.

What’s kind of cool, though, is that in each of the three cases — Microsoft, EA, Sony — there were clear target audiences, and while sometimes they overlapped, for most of the time they were very distinct from one another. This is good. This makes things exciting and interesting, and means we don’t keep seeing the same things over and over again.

The big divide seen today came largely between Sony versus Microsoft and EA. The latter put out huge, dubstep-fuelled trailers featuring lots of shooting and sports and other manly pursuits. The former opened the show with Shuhei Yoshida quietly playing with the console live on stage, closely followed by one of its least exciting games (Gran Turismo) accompanied not by dubstep, but with some rather stirring orchestral/choral music.

Microsoft and EA have their audiences — the people who enjoy their triple-A blockbuster experiences; the people who enjoy playing sports games; the people who are happy to play nothing but games with Battlefield in their title — and that’s cool. But it was even cooler to see Sony catering to its own niche rather than trying to emulate Microsoft. Some gorgeous looking independent titles; some solid support for the Vita; some intriguing looking exclusives — good stuff, and it got me far more excited than Microsoft and EA’s stuff. And that’s fine — I’ve long thought that various companies should specialise their output a little more rather than attempting to, as Jim Sterling so frequently mocks, “appeal to a wider audience”.

Interestingly, opinions have been a little split today. For the most part, my Twitter feed was enthusiastic about Sony’s conference while it was happening, but I’ve seen a few people expressing disappointment. Those who were particularly disappointed were either 1) in Microsoft and EA’s target audience, which is understandable because Sony very obviously aimed in the opposite direction, or 2) fans of Japanese games, of which there weren’t any on display. Still, there’s always TGS for the latter, at least, so it’s a little premature to worry about the PS4 — and I remain convinced that Sony platforms will remain the place to be for Japanese titles, especially if their publishing partners teased back when the PS4 was first announced are anything to go by.

Anyway. My eyelids are drooping so I’m off to sleep.

1309: Dress-Up

A guilty pleasure of mine that I’ve always had is playing dress-up. It doesn’t matter if it’s in reality or in some sort of virtual world (more commonly the latter these days, to be honest) — I love picking out outfits and accessories and attempting to coordinate and/or clash them horribly. It’s ironic, really, given my own complete lack of interest in fashion — though this comes about more from being a big guy who can’t get any decent clothes that fit than anything else.

A number of different interactive experiences have scratched my dress-up itch over the years. Most recently, I’ve been having fun with the “attachments” feature in Namco Bandai’s Tales of Xillia, which allows you to deface all of your party members with various accessories, extra bits of hair and glasses, then enjoy your monstrous creations in battle, in the field and in cutscenes. Despite the potential for mischief, though, I’ve stayed largely restrained and sensible: protagonist Milla is sporting a pair of elf ears (that really suit both her looks and personality); “childhood friend” character Leia is sporting some adorable pigtails and half-rim glasses; young girl Eliza has her adorability factor amped up to 11 with the addition of wiggly rabbit ears and a fluffy tail.

Final Fantasy XIV has its share of amusement value from clothing and appearance options, too. I spent quite a long time on creating the look of my character this time around, eventually settling on a Hyur (human) female with red hair (of course) with some bright highlights giving her a slightly “frosted” look — very Final Fantasy. XIV’s character creation tools give you a wealth of options to play with, some of which you’ll only ever see in cutscenes, but it’s nice to be able to take advantage of them. My character, for example, has a small heart-shaped tattoo on her cheek that is all but invisible unless you look closely, and also has odd-coloured eyes. No-one I’m playing the game with will notice those things as, generally speaking, you don’t get close enough to other players to see that much detail. But when I see her doing her thing in cutscenes, I’ll see those little details I added and she’ll feel like my avatar, rather than something arbitrarily chosen for me.

I used to play on a roleplaying server for World of Warcraft, which meant a significant proportion of my time in the game was spent sitting around talking to other players and pretending to actually be our characters. It was a lot of fun, particularly as WoW offered you a few “non-combat” outfits that you could dress in. Since my character was a skilled tailor, she’d managed to make herself a nice array of different dresses to suit various occasions, and it was always fun to show up in a new outfit and have it acknowledged.

This particular guilty pleasure of mine means that there’s one type of DLC I have a total weakness for, even with my general like of nickel-and-dime pointless DLC that doesn’t add anything to the experience, and that’s costume DLC. If I have the option to customise my characters’ appearances further with new downloadable costumes, chances are I will take that opportunity. This likewise means that if a game provides the opportunity to earn a new costume by completing various challenges, I will generally drop everything I’m doing to try and earn that costume. I recall a ridiculous amount of grinding in Dark Chronicle (aka Dark Cloud 2 to earn a leopard-print bikini, but man, it felt good to finally earn it and subsequently take on the final boss in a woefully underdressed state.

Anyway. I digress, before I start getting into a lengthy discussion of how immensely fashionable my Second Life avatars were in their heyday…

1308: Adventurer’s Guild

The Final Fantasy XIV beta closes down early tomorrow morning, so I’ve been making the most of it this weekend. I’ve levelled my Thaumaturgist class all the way to 20 — the level cap for the beta — and had a play around with the Weaver crafting class for a bit, taking that up to level 11. This gives me a nice head start ready for when live service begins — though the nice thing about Final Fantasy XIV is that if at any point you fancy a change, just switch out your weapon and bam! You’re another class.

This carries its own considerations however — the main one being that if you switch to a class based in a city you’ve already done all the low-level quests in, you might struggle to find things to do if you’re not used to all the additional stuff the game offers. In that particular situation, you turn to any one of a number of different possibilities: the short, snappy, time-limited Levequests; your Hunting Log, which challenges you to hunt down specific monsters in set quantities in exchange for very generous experience point rewards; Guildhests, which are short, extremely fun co-op challenges you take on alongside other players; or simply grinding.

I wanted to give another shout-out to the amount of effort that’s been put into the game’s story. As well as the usual MMO-style “random people need you to do odd jobs” quests you get around the place, there’s a “main quest” to follow, too. After a certain point, this quest tasks you with travelling to the other two capital cities in the world to meet their leaders and start making preparations for what is clearly going to be some sort of Epic Battle later in the plot. What was particularly great about this quest was the fact that it makes you feel super-important — you’re sent off on an airship to the other cities, and as the ship leaves, the Final Fantasy prologue theme triumphantly blares out, as majestic as ever. Then you get some awesome “meanwhile” scenes — something that doesn’t tend to happen in MMOs — that give you a real feeling of the plot unfolding even when you’re not present. There’s some characters who look a lot like FFXII’s Judges in play, it seems, and I’m looking forward to the inevitable confrontation with them later in the story.

It’s hard to pin down one thing that’s quite so satisfying about FFXIV because it really is an example of lots of overlapping systems complementing each other very well. There are lots of different ways to play, and plenty of means to ensure that you shouldn’t find yourself getting bored or with nothing to do — unless, of course, you don’t enjoy the base mechanics, in which case there’s probably not a lot that can be done for you. The final game’s going to be great; I can’t wait to see what the future holds in updates and expansions.

1307: Thaumaturgist

You’ll have to excuse any typos in this post; I’m very tired due to having spent a significant proportion of the day/evening playing the Final Fantasy XIV beta. And I’m pleased to confirm that it’s very much living up to my expectations.

I’m playing a Thaumaturgist this time around — in the last phase of beta I played a Pugilist. I was a little concerned that the game would fall into the usual MMO trap of all classes playing in a pretty similar manner — spamming the same combination of hotbar items over and over again, repeat until dead — but the Thaumaturgist plays noticeably differently to the Pugilist. As it should be.

While the Pugilist is a melee character that demands you get close in to — and preferably behind — your enemies, the Thaumaturgist is a ranged magic damage dealer. Unlike your common or garden usual MMO mage, though, the Thaumaturgist makes use of an interesting mechanic that, thematically, represents their “aetherial balance” between “Astral Fire” and “Umbral Ice”. Essentially, what this means is one of two things: if you’re in Astral Fire state, you do increased damage with your fire spells, but they also cost more magic points to cast; if you’re in Umbral Ice state, your spells do less damage but your magic points regenerate a lot more rapidly than they would usually. Playing a Thaumaturgist effectively involves knowing how to use these two states effectively to ensure you have good damage output while also keeping your stock of magic points high.

That’s not all, though. Each of the classes in FFXIV has its own unique questline to follow, with new “episodes” in the story coming every five levels or so. The nice thing about these is that they have their own storyline to follow, but also they help teach you things about your class you might not have realised. The level 15 quest for the Thaumaturgist, for example, is essentially a stealth mission that teaches you about the effectiveness of your Sleep spell: you’re tasked with sneaking in to retrieve an artifact, and rather than fighting the strong enemies who are between you and it, you simply put them all to sleep and prance through singing “trollolololol” or something.

What I’ve really been surprised about is how much effort’s been put into the narrative side of things — something that’s often neglected in MMOs. The genre giant World of Warcraft, for example, has an enormously rich and detailed setting to draw on, and yet — at least in its early incarnations, I haven’t been back since Catacylsm — this storytelling potential was utterly squandered in boring quests that were given to you in the form of dull text readouts.

Final Fantasy XI, XIV’s predecessor, was somewhat better in that there were “missions” as well as “quests” to do — these often incorporated cutscenes, story progression and even boss fights at times, but XI’s difficulty and painfully slow progression meant that a lot of people might not have got very far.

XIV nails the balance. There’s a ton of solo content you can do, with a storyline to follow that makes your character feel important. There are recognisable non-player characters whom you come to have various feelings about, and events occur that actually have some sort of meaning. There’s also a lot of instanced battles where you get your own private special event without other players interrupting — proper boss battles. And these aren’t just like fighting any other monster — sometimes you’ll be battling alongside other non-player characters in a huge skirmish, other times you’ll have to hold out against seemingly overwhelming odds until an NPC shows up to tip the balance in your favour.

It all feels like an actual Final Fantasy, in short, rather than an MMO with a Final Fantasy skin atop it. Your incentive for progression comes as much from the unfolding story and the cool setpieces as it does from gaining yet another level.

I haven’t done a lot of group stuff yet, but I did try a Guildhest earlier. This also gave me the opportunity to try the Duty Finder system, whereby you mark yourself as wanting to do a specific multiplayer “thing” — be it a Guildhest, a dungeon or something else — and then let the game match you with other people looking to do the same thing automatically. Pleasantly, you can continue playing while you wait to find a party — it’s a good time to take on the short, snappy, time-limited “levequests” for some pocket money and experience.

As for the Guildhest, it was short but very enjoyable. It was essentially a party-based arena battle intended to give players practice at working together and trying not to aggro multiple groups of enemies. Initially, you and your teammates must simply take out two parties of relatively easy monsters; then another set appears, accompanied by a huge boss monster. Inevitably, they all come charging towards you, so it becomes necessary to prioritise your targets — taking out the smaller things first before starting on the big boss. When you’ve successfully completed it, the iconic Final Fantasy fanfare plays as if you’d just completed a battle in a “normal” Final Fantasy game — a nice touch.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how the game continues once it officially launches later this month — the current beta only allows you to progress up to level 20 and is still lacking a couple of features. The only real challenge is going to be — as ever — juggling both it and other games I want and/or need to play!

1306: Mark Book

My brain occasionally lapses into childhood when I contemplate looking at comment sections, because, as full of cretins as they sometimes are, comment sections are the modern-day equivalent of the red (sorry, green — red’s too aggressive) pen scribblings your teachers would scrawl after your assignments at school.

Imagine if the two scenarios were reversed, though. That’d be weird, wouldn’t it? Get your maths homework back with “lol fake and gay” written after it; read a New Statesman article and discover the entire comment section is nothing but people writing variations on “You have the beginnings of a good argument here, but your overuse of the word ‘problematic’ displays a disappointing lack of creativity that ultimately hurts the piece’s credibility. See me to discuss.”

Actually, I think in the latter case, that’d probably be preferable, to be honest.

I joke, but I do genuinely feel like I’m being “marked” when I see that there are comments on things that I’ve posted. In some senses, when you put something up for public perusal — particularly on something with a wider audience than this teeny-tiny personal blog — you are being marked, particularly if you’ve written something contentious.

A lot of writing on the Web is designed to persuade people of something or other, whether that’s that the reader should go and buy Gone Home (you probably should) or that the art in Dragon’s Crown is going to bring about the downfall of society as we know it (it’s probably not), and as such when someone feels compelled to leave a comment, they’re going to be going through your arguments, deciding whether or not they agree with them and then leaving their “judgement” on the piece. If someone agrees with you, it’s like getting a nice big tick, a “Good.” and a gold star; if someone disagrees with you — particularly if they do so aggressively — it’s like not only having a lengthy teacher comment that you hope your parents don’t catch a glimpse of, but it’s like having that comment publicly read out to the rest of the class.

Except there’s one key difference between comments and marks — comments are (theoretically, anyway) a dialogue; marks from your teacher are a one-way thing. (At least they were when I was at school; I wouldn’t be at all surprised if modern education invited pupils to “respond” to their teacher’s comments and/or “appeal” if they didn’t feel they’d been treated fairly.)

That’s a pretty big difference. Even if someone gives you a “bad grade” through a negative comment or a complete disagreement/dismissal of your opinion, you can attempt to engage with that person and start a conversation. Sometimes interesting discussions can arise; other times, utterly pointless shouting matches can result, leaving you wishing you’d never written the fucking thing in the first place.

Are comments valuable? There’s no easy answer to that question. I don’t think they’re valuable in all circumstances — it’s extremely rare to find a helpful YouTube comment, for example, and comments left on Facebook are 95% pointless, regardless of whether they’re left on personal posts or adverts — but at other times they can be the source of thought-provoking discussion and even the fostering of friendships. (Comments on this site have certainly fallen into that latter category, which I’m happy about, and over on USgamer we’ve mostly enjoyed respectful, well-considered discussion and debate from our commenters so far, which is immensely encouraging to see.)

Would the Internet be a better place without comment sections? Quite possibly; but it would also remove a lot of the ability to converse and engage with things that we take for granted today. So, for better or worse, they’re clearly here to stay.

Just remember to give your favourite writers a good mark every now and then!

1305: Kiss Kiss

Okay. After mentioning it the other day in my lengthy post about hentai, I feel compelled to talk a little more about the anime KissXSis, since I’ve watched a few more episodes of it now and am about halfway through the complete run.

KissXSis is, let’s not mess around here, not a fine work of art. I am finding it entertaining, certainly, but I question as to whether or not it’s “good”. It’s certainly not something that everyone would appreciate, given that it’s riddled with gratuitous fanservice throughout and actually gets a whole lot racier in certain episodes than I thought it was going to.

Speaking completely honestly and frankly, though, this is quite refreshing in a strange sort of way. It’s a show that has absolutely no shame whatsoever — in its subject matter; in its gleeful celebration of eroticism; in its acknowledgement that teenagers — both male and female — are horny little fuckers. While I’m well familiar with this side of Japanese culture from eroge, this is, I think, the first show that actually goes noticeably further in this direction than others I’ve seen.

Let’s back up a mo just in case you’re unfamiliar with this series — and let’s face it, unless you’ve specifically sought it out for one reason or another, you probably are. (I’m actually fuzzy on exactly how I came across it in the first place, to be honest; I think I may have stumbled upon it on a fansub site or something.)

KissXSis is a slice-of-life anime (there, that’s probably enough to put a bunch of you off; as regular readers will know, however, I’m a big fan of this sort of thing) in which the male lead Keita is constantly harassed by his twin stepsisters Ako and Riko. Keita — initially at least — knows that despite the fact he is not related to his sisters by blood — and despite the fact his father (his blood parent) is seemingly desperate for him to get with one or both of them — it would probably be a bad idea to do anything inappropriate with them. That doesn’t stop them from trying, however, and indeed the temptation proves to be a little too much for Keita on more than one occasion — though the show consistently interrupts anything truly outrageous happening before it gets out of hand.

If that were all, the show could have probably hobbled along as something of a one-trick pony for twelve episodes or so, with Ako and Riko concocting increasingly elaborate plans to seduce Keita — and indeed it looks as if it might go that way in the first couple of episodes. As the series progresses, though, the cast gradually expands and Keita’s relationships become more complex. We have his awkward relationship with the quiet, shy librarian girl Miharu whom Keita regularly ends up accidentally and unintentionally doing totally inappropriate things to, usually as an indirect result of the twins’ interference; we have his “childhood friend”-type relationship with his underclassman Mikazuki, a loli with an pantsu-flashing fetish whose innocent appearance belies the fact she’s actually far more mature than her 23-year old sister; and, in the arc I’m just getting into, said 23-year old sister — also Ako’s homeroom teacher — turns out to not only be a closet otaku, but also a bit of a pervert herself, much as she’d rather deny that fact to herself and everyone around her.

It’s a horny little show, much of whose humour revolves around sexuality and inappropriateness, and it’s perhaps for this reason it’s not all that well-known over in the West — I don’t believe it’s had an official translation or localisation, which might explain the hack job on the subtitles in some of the episodes I’ve watched so far. It’s oddly endearing, though, and like a good eroge it knows when to turn up the heat and when to relax. It’s a massive prick-tease for a significant proportion of its screen time, and if you’re as shallow a pervert as I am that will doubtless be enough to keep you watching. However, alongside all this is an amusing — if occasionally uncomfortable — tale about teenagers coming to terms with themselves and their feelings, told by a genuinely memorable cast of characters. Ako and Riko in particular are both genuinely loveable characters and I’ve found myself rooting for them to get with Keita even despite the inherent “wrongness” of it all.

So, then, while it’s not a show I’m going to recommend specifically to you or to anyone, I’ll just say that I am enjoying it as a bit of a guilty pleasure at present and leave it at that. You may do with that information as you please. (Except blackmail. I hate blackmail.)

(Oh, and it has one of my favourite ending animation/song combos I’ve seen. Super-simple, but super-effective. I’ll leave you with it.)

1304: Reppin’ the Row

The Saints Row IV embargo lifted earlier today, and some of you may have already read my contribution to USgamer’s review. Since I wasn’t the main reviewer on that, though, I thought I’d take a moment or two to write something a bit more personal about why I like it so much and why you, dear reader, should probably pick the game up when it comes out.

Saints Row IV is exactly, as many people have already said today, where the series needed to go. Rather than aping Grand Theft Auto — something the series hasn’t really been doing since its first installment, and even then it was its own distinct thing to a certain extent — it’s gone full-on batshit crazy, and is all the better for it.

Let’s back up a moment and look at a game that clearly had a significant impact on Saints Row IV’s development: Crackdown.

Crackdown was an interesting game, and one of the more underrated titles in the Xbox 360’s library. Most people picked it up purely for access to the Halo 3 beta, but I spent a lot of time with both Crackdown and its subsequent sequel. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good fun, particularly when you shared the experience with a friend. It was one of the few games in which the relative lack of storyline helped rather than hindered the experience — it meant that leaping around from rooftop to rooftop collecting those elusive “agility orbs” didn’t feel at odds with what you were “supposed” to be doing in narrative terms. Rather, Crackdown set itself up to be a superpowered playground, and that’s exactly what it provided. To make things even better, it makes the best use of Achievements I think I’ve ever seen on the platform, encouraging players to cooperate with their friends to complete various silly challenges, such as playing tennis with a car and a pair of rocket launchers.

Crackdown’s biggest thrill was its sense of freedom — the feeling that you could go anywhere, do anything, or at least anything within the constraints of the controls you were provided with. The game encouraged you to explore and try to do ridiculous things. One of the first things a lot of people tried to do was climb the tallest tower in the city, then leap off without dying. Sure enough, in the full version of the game you get an achievement for doing both of these things. It’s a game that not only encourages its players to have fun, it rewards them for it.

Saints Row IV is, to a certain extent, the same. While it has a more structured narrative than Crackdown ever did, it has that same sense of freedom that comes from the use of ridiculous superpowers. Not long after starting the game, you’re provided with both super speed and super jump powers, both of which can be gradually upgraded. Eventually, you’re not only hurtling along the roads faster than traffic, you’re running up walls, leaping from building to building, gliding across half the city in a single bound, then crashing down to earth, scattering everything and causing chaos around your landing area. You’re encouraged to make full use of these powers by collecting Saints Row IV’s equivalent of Agility Orbs — and there are over a thousand of them to find. You’re also challenged to make skilful use of them by climbing vertigo-inducing alien towers, and to use them in creative ways to clear out heavily-fortified alien outposts.

The activities you’ll be indulging in while playing Saints Row IV are diverse, and there’s been an obvious and conscious move away from the more “criminal” activities seen in Saints Row The Third. You’re still doing things like deliberately injuring yourself for insurance fraud, though this time around your superpowers causes your ragdoll to go cartwheeling down the road for miles at a time, making the experience far more akin to something like Burnout Paradise’s Showtime mode than anything else. At another moment, you might be using telekinetic powers to throw objects, cars and people through hoops. On another occasion, you might be carefully using your superjump to accurately land on platforms in an abstract environment, or racing through Wipeout-style tunnels in an attempt to score as many points as possible before you reach the end. There’s a lot to do, and pretty much all of it is genuinely fun, whether you’re alone or playing co-op with a friend.

The story provides a good impetus to keep playing, too. The characters are all endearing, despite all of them having “asshole” tendencies to varying degrees, and there’s a real sense of camaraderie between them. Those who have played earlier games in the series will be pleased with some significant nods towards series continuity — including a guest appearance by Eliza Dushku, who played Shaundi back in Saints Row 2 — but this is never done in such a way as to feel exclusionary to those for whom this is their first Saints Row game. Collectibles include audio logs from each of the major characters, so you can delve into their backstory as much or as little as you like — and it’s clear that the team at Volition considers this motley crew far more than just generic tropes.

By far the best thing about the whole experience, though, is how much ownership you can take of it all. You can design your own character to be however you please. It can be male, female, transgender or anything you please. It can be attractive, ugly, fat, thin, realistic, alien-looking… the list goes on. And once you’re into the game, you can continue to feel like your character is “yours” by choosing their voice, the way they taunt people and the way they compliment them. Seeing them in cutscenes is a constant delight, even if they don’t look anything like “you” — there’s something inherently satisfying about seeing a character that is entirely of your own design playing the leading role in a game. Of course, it’s mostly an illusion — there’s only a limited selection of voices to choose from, for example — but even knowing that, there’s a huge amount of joy to be had from it being “your” character while still having a personality that has obviously been written with some care.

Short version, then: you should play Saints Row IV. It’s out soon. Buy a copy. You won’t regret it.

1302: ZETTAI RYOUI– I mean HERO

Have I mentioned ZHP, aka Zettai Hero Project: Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman on these pages yet? I forget. If not, I’m about to. If I am about to repeat myself, eh, whatever.

ZHP, as I will refer to it from now on to save my sanity, is an RPG from Nippon Ichi for PSP (Vita compatible). Its aesthetic and style is strongly reminiscent of NIS’ flagship strategy RPG series Disgaea, but it’s a very different sort of game — rather than being a turn-based strategy RPG, it’s a turn-based sort-of-roguelike in which you control a single character.

The concept of ZHP is pleasingly ridiculous. The Earth’s hero, the Unlosing Ranger, is on the way to save the world from villain Darkdeath Evilman when he gets run over. As he dies, he passes on his powers to the silent protagonist you spend the rest of the game playing. You, as the new Unlosing Ranger, are immediately thrown into NES-style turn-based RPG combat against Darkdeath Evilman and are defeated almost as quickly as combat begins. Thus begins a lengthy adventure to “train” yourself how to be a proper hero.

I’m only about 10 hours or so into the game so far so I can’t comment with any authority on how the game progresses, but I’m really enjoying it. It’s pleasantly portable friendly while at the same time being deep enough to also encourage hefty play sessions if you’ve got the time or inclination. Despite being turn-based, the dungeon crawling, exploration and combat feels very fast-paced and enjoyable. There’s a lot of loot to collect, all of which is reflected on your character’s appearance when you equip it, but a lot of it is very temporary — items have very limited durability, and thus become all but useless after a while.

Progression in ZHP is unconventional and bizarre. Unlike a traditional roguelike, there’s no permadeath — instead, being defeated in a dungeon tots up all the levels you gained on that particular run and adds them to your “Total Level”. This, in turn, provides bonuses to your base statistics, which means that “level 1” the next time you go into a dungeon is a significantly better “level 1” than it was at the start of the game. This progression can be supplemented by inserting various objects into your body, at which point they become “chips” that affect your base statistics. Then there’s Hero Energy to direct around, booster items to plug into your chips and all manner of other nonsense. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, but it seems to work really well.

At the stage I’ve just got to in the game, I’ve just unlocked a 60-floor dungeon that is clearly intended for grinding purposes. Given that the maps, enemies and even environments are randomly generated each time you enter, the whole game could have been this enormous dungeon and I’d have been happy, but there’s a fun and surprisingly “nice” story running alongside it all too — part of the game’s concept is that by running through the dungeons in “Bizarro World” you’re helping solve the problems of “real” people back on Earth while simultaneously powering yourself up enough to battle Darkdeath Evilman.

Anyway. If you need a portable RPG — and one that’s both toilet- and commute-friendly — then it’s well worth a look. Don’t let the Disgaea-esque aesthetic put you off if you weren’t a fan of that series — ZHP is a very different beast indeed and well worth your time.