Only One Act

Okay there's this doujin game out called ∀kashicverse -Malicious Wake- and it's totally awesome. So I am going to talk about it in the hopes that it will interest some, and possibly introduce people to a fun, unique, and lovingly designed game that they might have missed.



( CONTACT BEGIN )

Anyway! If these tiny, brightly colored screenshots and clumsy explanations of the gameplay mechanics have piqued your interest, here are some relevant links:

endless-shirafu's official game page, where you can download the free, three-stage demo.

A complete playthrough of the game (this is the video I took my screenshots from)

Playlist of the game's music, because it is mandatory that all shmups have amazingly catchy music, apparently.

If you do give ∀kashicverse a try, I hope you enjoy it! It is a wonderfully crafted game. :)

I got Borderlands 2 for Christmas and oh god it has eaten my life. I would probably be playing it right now, in fact, if I hadn't been stupid and gotten both of my characters (an Assassin and a Siren) stuck at different bosses--I can't solo them, so now I have to wait for friends to get on to help me out. Well, I could make my game public and see if random people join, but the general populace of Xbox Live is absolutely horrible and I'd rather not taint my gaming sessions with unnecessary misogyny and overall asshattery.

Also got Threatrhythm Final Fantasy, which is not quite as addicting but very cute. I'm also quite pleased with the music selection, although I wish they'd included a few more FFX tracks. The game includes 'To Zanarkand,' 'Mi'hen Highroad,' 'Fight with Seymour,' and both the regular and orchestral versions of Suteki Da Ne, but nothing else. Personally I would have picked 'Sprouting' (the Moonflow theme) over Mi'hen Highroad, and just about any battle theme over the Seymour one, but OH WELL. At least Sprouting is a downloadable track. (Also: 'Challenge,' the music from the Yunalesca battle which I hate with a raging passion. The music, not the battle. Well, okay, I guess I hate both, because the Yunalesca fight was the worst.)

Anyway, it's a pretty enjoyable rhythm game, although I don't think it's worth the full $40 retail price. It's a good thing I got it as a present because it's short and while the song list is sizable it's still small enough to get repetitive if you play for longer than like...half an hour. It's especially repetitive in the Chaos Shrine mode, which generates random songs with variable note patterns--after a few games the song list starts repeating. A LOT. I swear, if I get another note with Blue Fields, I'll cry.

Apropos of nothing, I like having Lightning and Squall in my party because they are utterly humorless and it is amusing to see run around and smack monsters in an adorable fashion while keeping up their ~too cool to care~ attitudes. Your teenage angst is trumped by cutesy character designs, kiddos. :p

In real life news, there is a lot of drama occurring in the house this week. But since it is still in-progress I am having trouble sorting out my thoughts on the matter. I may post about it later, but maybe not. (Vague update is vague.)

So, occasionally I buy from Play-Asia. Which means that, every now and then, they send me an email informing me of new products that may be relevant to my interests. Today I was notified of a game called Love Tore: Mint. The title wasn't exactly informative, but Play-Asia thoughtfully supplied a description:

In Mint, the sequel to Sweet, you are faced with a new problem. The school wants you to win the national dance championship. The girls are not used to discipli...

My initial reaction: THIS IS A HENTAI GAME ISN'T IT WHY IS IT BEING RELEASED ON THE 360 AND ALSO WHY DOES PLAY ASIA THINK I AM INTERESTED IN IT :(

however! clicking to the Play-Asia site showed that Love Tore: Mint is just a Kinect exercise/dance game with a story mode. The 'discipline' that set off the hentai alarms is actually 'disciplined practice. Phew! The summary also indicated that this fluffy-looking game was in fact a tragedy, since the girl you want to dance with doesn't want to dance with you oh no!!11!!! and you have to crush your dreams by dancing with, gasp, some other girl you don't like as much at the state championship. Anyway, since I have bought a number of dance games and 360 games, the recommendation made a bit more sense. A dancing/bishojo game hybrid would not be the worst thing I have played by choice.

And then I watched the trailer and things got uncomfortable again. Because Love Tore (actually, the official name is Love*Tra, for, um, 'Love Training') is not particularly concerned with dance routines and catchy music; it's far more interested in letting you focus the camera on inappropriate areas and pretending to slow dance with virtual ladies. And here I was, hoping that it would be like Dance Dance Revolution but with lots more hilariously overwrought melodrama. Alas, the basement creeper demographic wins again. :c

And that's the story of today's email notifications. I know, I know, mine is a life of never-ending excitement.

Still plodding through Doom 3. I don't remember it being a particularly long game, although one of the achievements is to complete it in less than 10 hours which I guess means it's a lot longer than I thought. ANYWAY. When I first played through it took me aaaages to complete, because after like, half-an-hour I would be so creeped out I'd have to stop. (I'd like to say 'It was because I was young' but I was in college at the time, SO.) That hasn't really been an issue during this playthrough, but at one point, I was in a room that seemed like a dead end, and then a vent panel in the floor popped up, accompanied by ominous red light and eerie whispery noises to make it clear that a) crawling into a vent was inevitable and b) demons would be in said vent. And I just went lol NOPE and turned the game off.

THE THING IS, there were only two kinds of enemies that I could have encountered, both of which die in 1-2 hits, and I had approximately a zillion shotgun shells--it's not like any potential encounter would be unexpected or even hard to deal with. But somehow, using nothing more than ambient sound and dynamic shadows, the game convinced me to...I dunno, fearquit? WELL PLAYED, id.

Also! One of my favorite things about Doom 3 is the implication that Hell is like, not a religious thing at all, it's just a place where extremely kill-happy aliens live, and the human race's idea of demons and hell come from prehistoric encounters with those aliens. And stuff like pentagrams and demon-summoning rituals are just how the demon/alien teleportation technology manifests, so when humans begin faffing around with super-advanced science like instant teleportation, or building devices that break down materials at the atomic level to create crazy destructive weaponry demon-contact is inevitable. Then humanity discovers that what they thought was supernatural WAS REALLY SCIENCE THE WHOLE TIME OMG.

Obviously this is a well-worn trope but I always appreciate it when a story makes use of it. It's a fun way to subvert the 'religion/spiritual/paranormal vs. science' conflict, and because I am a great big dork I love it when a story goes the extra mile and tries to explain fantasy shenanigans with science-fiction technobabble. IT JUST MAKES ME INEXPLICABLY HAPPY.

SO ANYWAY. The whole "magic is really science" thing is one of my favorite things about the MCU version of Asgard. (I don't think it holds up for comics Asgard because--even though there are a lot of sci-fi elements in the Thor comics, there's a fairly strong definition between magic stuff and science stuff there.) But weirdly it has become an issue in the slash fiction I read lately. ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN. In like, nearly every slash fic involving Loki, the author uses Loki-magic to get around the 'boring' parts of the sexy bits, like taking off clothing and/or lubing up, because nobody ever wants to just like, describe people doing these things for some reason. And every single time this happens in fic instead of thinking about an undressed ready-for-fuckings Loki I start thinking 'BUT WAIT. If magic is just highly advanced science what are the processes involved in waving your hand to lube yourself up HOW DOES IT HAPPEN, EXPLAIN IT TO ME WITH SCIENCE PLEASE' and try to think of how one could manipulate the natural surroundings in such a way as to create lubricant out of thin air, and how to get the lube on/in the pertinent places without actually putting one's hands there which is maybe missing the point of the fic?

so yeah that's today's post

i am far, FAR too pleased at somehow seguing from Doom 3 to MCU slash fic tropes. clearly, I AM THE BEST BLOGGER.

Happy 20, November, flist! If you're familiar with the Beatmania and/or Dance Dance Revolution series, consider celebrating this auspicious day by playing a song or two from said games. :)

Yesterday someone at girlgamers made an interesting post about the future of micro-downloads; among other things, the TC compares the saturation of gaming apps by indie developers to the oversaturation of the video game industry in the early 80s that led to the infamous industry crash in 1983.

It seems like an odd comparison to make. It's true that certain platforms like the iOS/Android app markets and Facebook are flooded with copycat games using similar payment models (free to play with optional paid content), but other factors that led to the sudden decline in the 1980s video game market aren't present in the current app market. Notably, the costs associated with physically manufacturing cartridges and dealing with retailers, are basically non-existent in web apps--and it was oversaturation paired with enormous manufacturing costs and a lack of retail space that killed Atari and its competitors in 1983. While web app developers have to worry about development costs and recouping them, they don't have to worry about manufacturing a cartridge or convincing retailers to stock their game over a competitor's. The space in the app store is endless, and a developer only has to pay once to stick a game there.

The other major difference would be the way third-party development has changed. Third-party development didn't really *exist* until 1979, and Atari and the other console companies were completely unprepared for the effect they would have and incapable of controlling third-party output. By contrast Apple and Google designed their app stores with the express purpose of profiting from third-party software, and have complete control as to what they allow in their marketplace. Moreover, it's the third-party companies that bear the costs of development and are the only ones at risk if they fail--Apple/Google profit even if the companies making apps bomb. The absolute worst-case scenario for app gaming would see most of the small developers producing mediocre/copycat games disappear after making one or two games, and not have much of an effect on the app industry (can we call it that?) as a whole.

I think the only similarity between the early 1980s game market and the current app markets would be the overvaluation of game company profitability, but that's questionable. Certainly the 1980s market pre-crash was grossly overestimated, but it's much harder to determine how financially viable the biggest app developers are. I tend to think most social media and gaming companies are overvalued, but obviously not everyone agrees, and it will take awhile to see how things shake out.

So uh, I guess this means...crappy iOS/Android/Facebook games that are just knockoffs of more popular games are here to stay? OH WELL. :c

I finished RE6's first 3 campaigns a few days ago! It was...a mixed bag as far as entertainment goes. There were some parts that were fantastic and a great many parts that I found boring and a few parts that were pretty rage-quit worthy in their awfulness. All in all, a pretty standard RE experience.

I am not sure why this RE has taken up so much of my brainspace recently, though. I think it's partly due to the uneven quality--the great parts are already some of my favorite in the series, and the shitty parts are some of the worst gameplay experiences I've suffered in years. Also, every single RE discussion and review I've read ends up talking about the series as a whole and the direction video games in general are headed and...there's just a lot to think about.

Not sure how all these thoughts will eventually come out, nor how coherent they will be. When I was playing through the campaigns I tended to go on GameFAQs forums and/or the RE6 tumblr tag and dump all of my thoughts onto the unsuspecting masses there, so I guess I'll just do the same here. :P

Spoilers behind the cut. Also: wall of text that I did not intend to write. I had more opinions than I realized. :S

( Chris Chapter 1 )

I realize that most of the RE6 stuff I've posted has been negative, but I genuinely enjoy the game. There's just a lot of boring stuff you have to wade through to get to the good parts.

Having finished Leon's campaign in Resident Evil 6, I have a question for you:

WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING

Okay, Capcom. I'll be charitable, and assume what you wanted to do was have a massive, city-spanning boss battle of epic scope and size and excellence. A fight against a relentless, ever-evolving monster that would force gamers to stay on their toes mentally, make them constantly re-evaluate their strategies and use every weapon and trick available to attain victory.

What you actually did was--well.

This is going to take awhile, so I suggest back buttoning before the whine you get comfortable. I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS TO SHARE.

( Cut for RE6 spoilers )

With equal parts love and boulder-punching rage,

terabient

★ I picked up Persona 4 Arena about a week ago and it is PRETTY EXCELLENT. Also Laura Bailey-as-Rise/Risette is just the cutest thing ever and I wish she could narrate my life the way she narrates my fights. She's so concerned and enthusiastic about my videya gaem playing! I was fond of Rise in P4, but she's easily my favorite in P4A, despite not being playable at all.

★ Summary of an interview with Blazblue producer Toshimichi Mori! There is a whole bunch of stuff mentioned here, but this is what interested me the most:

-Arakune speaks in coherent sentences now.
I don't know how I feel about this -- Arakune's shattered speech struck me as annoying at first, then I thought it was a great idea, and now...I don't know. I want to know what's caused the change noooooooooooow, gdi.

-The old characters all had their themes remixed.
NEW MUSIC YAY =D

-(Direct translation) First of all, as you might guess from his attention to young handsome boys, Amane is interested in adding Carl to his traveling troupe. However, he also interests Rachel for some reason, so there’s going to be some interaction between them, too.
...WHAT

Anyway, there's a full translation here for more detailed info.

★ Screencaps of the stills from the end Blazblue CP PV I posted these awhile ago on tumblr and forgot to link them here x_x

★ I haven't been particularly impressed with DC's Before Watchmen series; the art is gorgeous, obviously, considering the artists involved, but the writing is at best uninspired and at worst seems to utterly miss what drove certain characters to act as they did.

Anyway, Before Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan was released this week and like...Straczynski are you even trying anymore. Seriously, how many times are you going to misuse the Schrodinger's cat experiment and trot out the many-worlds hypothesis in your stories? ALL THE TIME? At this point, I'm fairly certain that JMS is building up to the ~shocking reveal~ that Jon's reactor accident was--gasp!--not an accident but deliberately caused by *DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUN!* Dr. Manhattan himself. Except JMS has used this plot before and it was pretty dumb then and would be even less compelling now, and it doesn't really add anything to the Watchmen universe or enrich the original text and god this whole thing is just an exercise in pointlessness, which is not really a surprise but still, annoying. Dr. Manhattan is my favorite Watchmen character and I was hoping his Before Watchmen series would be at least mildly interesting, but now I have no desire to read it, even with the absolutely stunning artwork. :(

★ My current comics pull list: Action Comics, Daredevil, Dial H for Hero. Been thinking about adding one more, but honestly nothing is really catching my eye right now.

....because i've had 'write about X number of things' on my list of stuff to do for well, over a month, and now that number of things is somewhat overwhelming. Also after waiting forever to post about things I will undoubtedly forget details that will return to me only after i've finished, but whatever, gotta start somewhere.

so uh, i guess i'll just list all of the things that have been taking up my brainspace recently?

( Soulcalibur V, EVO, competitive gaming )

( The Avengers has devoured my mind )

( Comics & manga & the purchasing of such )

( Kink bingo card, thoughts )

so uh i play a lot of SCV online, mostly with the occasionally fine folks who post at gamefaqs, and the guy who sets up the room has started streaming and recording the sessions.

anyway i got recorded last night and it was kind of intimidating but also kind of cool? the voice chat was recorded too, which was neat until i heard my own voice, and came to the disappointing realization that my laugh is distinctly 'nervous chipmunk' like. :c

IF you are so inclined to watch some people of wildly varying skill levels beat each other up for like 4 hours, the saved stream from Saturday is here:

http://www.twitch.tv/heeeeresjonny86/b/313523462

(1:43:00 is about the time I joined in. i won my first match and then went on a ~TOTALLY AWESOME~ 13-game losing streak, which is actually what I usually average. i'm so pro at this game!)

other things in this stream: a badass Maxi player, a discussion about zubats, Hipster Douchebag Patroklos (actually there's a lot of Patroklos in general) and some Dorito taco shell talk somewhere.

it's exciting, maybe?