I kicked my PSTV Game into overdrive this past month.  I added a multitude of more resources I dig through every day for what games are PSTV compatible, be it upcoming or released games.  It wouldn’t be a tall tale to say I spend at least a good hour or two a day hunting for this information.

So, let’s get to the actual content of this.  This is my official recap of all the games added to the PSTV Compatibility List for May 2016:

Japan

Abunai Koi No Soushitsu: Eternal Happiness
Air
Bara Ni Kakusareshi Verite
Beni Bana
Brothers Conflict Precious Baby
Chaos;Child
Classic Dungeon Sengoku
Collar x Malice
Crimson Empire
Daisenryaku Daitouakouboushi 3
Daisenryaku Perfect
Dragon Quest Heroes II
Eve Burst Error R
Exstetra
Goes!
Grisai no Kaijitsu Spinout?!
Gundam Breaker 2
Gundam Breaker 3
Harukanaru Toki no Naka De 6
Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Yori
Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai Converted Edition
Infinite Stratos 2: Ignition Hearts
Kamen Rider Battride War Sousei
Kamigami no Asobi: Ludere Deorum Infinite
Klap! Kind Love and Punish
Kyoukai no Shirayuki
Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki (PSP)
Love:Quiz Koi Suru Otome no Final Answer
Mahou Tsukai to Goushujin-Sama
Moshi Kono Sekai Ni Kami-Sama Ga Iru To Suru Naraba
Re: Vice [D] Sayaka Buccaneers
Starry Sky: Spring Stories
Suran Digit
Toukiden 2
Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

North America

99Vidas The Game
A Duel Hand Disaster: Trackher
Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book
Corridor Z
Downwell
MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death
MOP: Operation Cleanup
Mystery Chronicle: One Way Heroics
Realm: Walk of Soul
Tumblestone
WRC 4
Yomawari: Night Alone
Zero Time Dilemma

Yep, that’s right.  49 games were added to the PSTV Compatibility List in a single month.  That’s some progress right there!  The more I look, the more I find, so stay tuned and watch the compatibility list (or sign up for the PSTV Mailing List on the Compatibility List page.

Title: Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir
Developer: Vanillaware, Atlus
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 1.9 GB
NA Availability: Digital Download | Retail
EU Availability: Digital Download | Retail
PSTV Support: Yes

Vanillaware.  That’s a name that can spark a lot in the gaming community.  They don’t have a lot of games to their name, but they have some quality titles in there.  PS Vita fans know them best for the multiplayer action RPG, Dragon’s Crown, and the brutally challenging Muramasa Rebirth.  One thing is for certain, though.  With the unique artistic style of the developer, it is always very easy to tell if you’re playing a Vanillaware game.

Going forward, the developer has gone back to its roots.  They began making games for the PlayStation 2.  Of the two games that came out for that system, one stands out as an essential origin of the side-scrolling combat systems that led to both Muramasa and Dragon’s Crown.  That game was called Odin Sphere, which is already available in this generation, as a PS2 Classic for PS3 owners.

The devs weren’t satisfied with that.  Instead, they completely remade the game for all PlayStation systems, including the PlayStation TV.  Here is my official review of Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir!

Story

Odin Sphere takes place around a war for a mystical device known as “The Cauldron”, known for having unnatural magical powers and being directly involved in the destruction of one of the world’s great nations.  The remaining nations of the world fight for it for different reasons: The Aesir warriors want control of it.  The Fairies want to keep it out of the wrong hands, and other parties want it for far sinister reasons.

While all of this is going on, you are in control of 5 characters heavily involved in various parts of the war on all sides, seeing the different positions as things go by.  The nice thing about the story is that each character’s story arc shows them growing as a character and their own personal story, while melding each up towards the overall storyline.

Gameplay

Odin Sphere is a side-scrolling beat-em-up action RPG.  The combat is similar to that of Muramasa being that you’re going through side-scrolling stages, collecting keys for puzzles, and fighting off waves of enemies and bosses while leveling up to increase your skills and obtain new abilities.

First of all, what is new in this remake?  There have been a lot of gameplay changes, like the POW gauge not being used as heavily to limit what you can do.  One bonus about the remake is that there are two main game modes.  The secondary mode is called “Classic Mode” which lets you play through the original PS2 version of Odin Sphere instead of the remade version.

Progression in Odin Sphere goes through character-based storylines.  The main screen of the game shows you controlling a young girl in a library, reading through tales of an age gone past, which is actually the plot of the game.  Unlike the demo, where you can choose whatever character you wish for a stage, you only have access to one character at the beginning.  Clear their story, another unlocks, and you continue this until you get through all six story arcs.

In each story arc, there are several chapters.  In each chapter, you will progress through a different dungeon to advance the story.  These chapters can easily be toggled between, so you can go back to previous chapters with your upgraded improvements in case you may have missed something in a previous dungeon.

While in dungeons, you are going through 2D side-scrolling stages with the goal of reaching the Boss Room to continue the story and challenge that chapter’s boss.  To reach this, you must traverse other rooms of the dungeons, comprised of Normal Stages, Battle Stages, Mid-Boss Stages, and Rest Stages.  Each stage type has a different purpose and contains different things.

Normal stages are just for you to navigate through.  They may have a few enemies, but combat is optional.  Battle Stages pit you against waves of enemies and grade you on your performance, mostly on how high of a combo you can accomplish without the combo breaking.  Mid-Boss stages are like battle stages, but have a boss fight you have to go through.  Instead of fighting, say, goblins and bears, you may be fighting off an airship or giant lion.

Finally, Rest Stages are combat-free, with NPCs to talk to, a shop to buy items from, and a bell you can ring to summon a chef that you can use gained ingredients to purchase food to eat, which heals you and gives you experience points towards leveling up.

This also brings us to the Food and Growing parts of gameplay.  As you journey, you will find plant seeds as well as magical energy called Phozons that enemies drop.  In a dungeon, you can plant seeds and give up phozons to let them grow and sprout food.  This food can then either be used for ingredients at the mobile restaurant or eaten to heal and give you experience points, just as defeating enemies will.  You can also obtain food at the restaurants in the Pooka Village you can visit between dungeons, using coins you find in stages as payment instead of ingredients.

Now to the most important part of gameplay: Combat.  No matter what character you’re using, you will be hacking and slashing with attacks to take down enemy troops.  You have various normal attacks you can do as well as skills that are learned as you proceed through the storyline.  Normal attack combos only get you so far, as the key to mastering the system is by linking and chaining skills into your combos to keep yourself constantly striking the enemies for as long as possible.

The nice thing about this is that all 5 characters have completely different playstyles.  Gwendolyn attacks with a spear and can utilize aerial jumping and gliding attacks while Mercedes can fly around the enemy, firing off rapid-fire magic shots from her cross-bow.  No matter who you use, you’ll learn different ways of utilizing combat.

Skills come by defeating bosses, but every dungeon also has a hidden skill from paths that you may not take otherwise.  Knowing that, it would be good to explore dungeons rather than just rushing through to get to the boss.  After all, you can save your game at any time in a dungeon.  These skills are mostly combat skills, which either use the always-regenerating POW gauge or the PP gauge that slowly builds back up as you fight.  You’ll need to find a balance between these two skill types, since PP Skills cannot be used nearly as often.

When you defeat enemies, you gain experience, money, and chests for the stage with rewards in it.  Experience lets you level up, which will increase your stats, key to getting the PP necessary for the high-end skills.  The rooms that give food as rewards is also a part of this experience as you get experience from the enemies you fought and the food you’re given.

There’s one thing that grinded my gears about the combat in the game: Boss Variety.  The bosses you fight are quite the spectacle, but there are a lot of bosses you fight in every single story scenario.  Going up against a flying airship with dwarves throwing bombs at you was pretty epic the first time.  It was not as epic the 4^th time with no new attack patterns from it.  The game re-uses at least a couple bosses in most of the story scenarios and that really puts a hinder on a fun combat system.

To help you fight, the game has an item and alchemy system.  You have a bag that can hold various types of items, from food to materials to magic potions.  Magic Potions have various effects, depending on what you have.  Some restore your health, some damage your enemies, and some can give you a boost or buff for damage, burn resistance, etc.  Items come in grades, and alchemy allows you to mix potions with other items to enhance them and make them stronger.  A health potion with alchemy could go from healing 100 HP to healing 750 HP.

Odin Sphere is difficulty, but not drastically so.  The game will challenge you (unless you play on Easy Mode) with bosses, making you realize this is not a button masher.  You’ll have to learn some boss patterns to be able to survive, especially against the bosses that use items against you and will constantly heal themselves when they get low on HP.  It’s a battle of wit and strategy.  And hitting them as much as possible.

As far as length is concerned, the HLTB website claims the original game is 37-40 hours long.  I would gauge the game more at 20-30 hours.  The longest any of the scenarios took me was about 7 hours, and that was one of the longer ones.  You may not get 40 hours of it, but I’d wager most would get at least 25-30 out of it.

Controls

Controlling this game isn’t hard to do, and everything is explained quite well.  While the game is compatible with the PlayStation TV, it doesn’t use any of the extra buttons for the micro-console.  No extra triggers are used here, nor is the touch screen on the Vita.

Moving around the stages and areas is done with the D-Pad and Left Analog Stick, while the Right Stick doesn’t do anything at all.  The two triggers are used for opening a skill menu and for doing quick dodge maneuvers.  The X button is used for flying and holding X for each character’s special aerial trick (Flying for Mercedes, Gliding for Gwendolyn, Teleporting for Oswald, etc) and Square is used for normal attacks.  Triangle lets you pull up the item screen and Circle is used for skills.

As I said before, all of this is explained to you, so there’s no confusion about what you’re supposed to do.

Presentation

Visually, this game looks beautiful whether you’re on the PS Vita or the PlayStation TV.  I almost exclusively played Odin Sphere on my PSTV through my 32” Smart TV.  From the character models to the active backgrounds, everything looks practically flawless.

Performance is one thing a lot of people didn’t like about the original Odin Sphere.  On the PS2, combat had a lot of lag and frame drops.  This was completely fixed in the remake.  The Vita version has no frame drops anything, aside from the intentional slow-motion sequences for when bosses are defeated.

Title: Paranautical Activity
Developer: Digerati Distribution
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 340 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: No

How exactly would you gauge the PS Vita situation on first-person shooters?  You’ve got a couple big name titles, like Borderlands 2, Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified, and Killzone Mercenary, but there aren’t a lot of other recognizable titles.  Sure, there’s a few more when you go into third-person shooters like 2013 Infected Wars and Resident Evil Revelations 2, but you’re not going to find an abundance of shooters on the system.

There is always the option to use Remote Play for PS4 shooters.  On that note, I can say that the new Doom game works wonderfully with Remote Play.  I played a good half of the game on my Vita without any issues.  But we don’t go around saying PS4 games release on Vita because of Remote Play.  I just kind of stare and mentally slap people across the face for saying that kind of thing.

Smaller developers is where we look for more shooters on the Vita.  Duke Nukem 3D got a PS Vita version which runs surprisingly well.  Being a fan of that style of game, I really got into it.  This past week, another first-person shooter has come to the Vita, in the vein of Doom and Quake.  Here is my review of Paranautical Activity!

Story

This game has no story, so this shall remain blank.

Gameplay

Now, who thought of using a sickle as a primary weapon in a shooting game?

This is a randomly-generated first-person shooter.  The base gameplay is like any FPS game, but it has a lot of randomly-generated elements.  In a way, it’s like The Binding of Isaac, but in the form of a shooter.  At its base, it’s a first-person shooter, though, so we’ll leave it at that.

There are three different game modes to play through: Classic Mode, Hardcore Mode, and Infinite Mode.  Only Classic Mode is unlocked from the start, so you need to beat prior game modes to unlock the next.  There’s also a section where you can check what you’ve unlocked and various game settings.

Once you start a game, you will be at an open elevator in the middle of a room.  Your task will be to navigate the various rooms of each floor to find a boss room (labeled by a pentagram) which guards the elevator to the next floor.  Finding the boss is as random as everything else.  It could take you 2 rooms to find it or 8.  But that is the main goal.  Find the boss, kill it, and take the elevator to the next floor and repeat until all floors are cleared.

There are many different types of rooms you can encounter, which is where the random element comes into play.  The majority of rooms are battle rooms that spawn enemies as soon as you enter.  In these rooms, all of the exits close until you’ve taken down all of that room’s enemies.  Boss rooms do the same thing.  You go in, the boss spawns, and you fight until you die or it dies.  Then, the exits open up for you to navigate onward.

So, why am I in an elevator, and why am I going up to get out?

The special types of rooms, other than Boss Rooms and the different battle rooms are mostly Shops.  When you defeat enemies, they will often drop money and health packs.  Health Packs, of course, heal what you lost in damage, but money is used in the shop.  Shops have different items.  Some have power-ups and useable items that can give you special effects, while others have weapons that you can trade out your current weapons for.  After all, who wouldn’t give up a shotgun for a mini-gun with infinite ammunition?

This brings up classes and combat.  There are many different classes you choose when you first start, and they dictate your speed, health, defense, and most importantly, your arsenal.  Each class has a main weapon with infinite ammunition and a super weapon with limited ammunition.  All classes play differently from the Tank class that has a shotgun and civil war-style cannon to Davie Bowie that only comes with an infinite Crossbow.

The way you fight is generally like other shooters.  Point your cross-hairs at an enemy and shoot until they die.  Normal weapons have infinite ammo, so there’s no point in conserving anything.  Whereas, the special weapons have very limited ammo that takes some time to build back up.  I generally save all special weapon ammo for bosses.

The last thing is items.  Like Binding of Isaac, there are lots of items that give you various enhancements.  Some are dropped by bosses and some bought from the shop.  These enhancements could give you a double-jump, increase your speed by sacrificing armor, increase your health by sacrificing speed, or something completely different.

A complaint I have, however, is the variety of “random” rooms the game has.  In Binding of Isaac, there are so many combinations, you could play the game hundreds of times and still never get the same exact rooms.  In Paranautical Activity, there really isn’t that much variety.  In each run, I see at least a few of the same room with the same enemies and same bosses that I saw the run before.  It is great your first 5 runs.  But once you’ve done a good 20 runs or so, you’ve seen pretty much everything there is to see.

Here is a fine modern re-enactment of Ahab vs Moby Dick.  Now with shotguns

Now, difficulty.  This isn’t an easy game.  First of all is the fact that there are no checkpoints.  You die, you start over from Floor 1.  This is a generally accepted rule of this type of randomly-generated game.  Each enemy has patterns and so does every boss.  Even if you’re familiar with FPS games, it’s going to be difficult at first.  But, the more you play, the more doable it gets.  You just have to remember you’re going to be dying and starting over a lot.

Time is hard to gauge.  A master at the game can probably do a full run in Classic Mode in about an hour, give or take.  Accounting for difficulty curves and adjusting to the game, I would gauge it more at several hours.  Not all at once, though.  Like Isaac, I see this as a good pick-up-and-play game for Vita owners.  Pick it up for a run or two when you’re bored or out in the world and only have a few minutes of free time.

Controls

The controls for the Vita differ from the PS4 version.  And to state it for those wondering, this is not compatible with the PlayStation TV, despite having button controls for everything in the Vita version.  It’s something I’m going to speak to the publishers about to try to get going in a patch, if I can.

Moving around is done with the Left Analog Stick and moving the camera with the Right Analog Stick.  The D-Pad is only used for navigating the pause menu and the title menu.  X is only used in the menu screens.  Square is used for nothing.  Triangle lets you switch weapons and Circle lets you toss bombs.  Finally, the L trigger lets you jump and R trigger fires from your guns.

I don’t really have complaints about the control scheme, but do about how it’s explained to you.  Basically, it’s not explained to you.  Nothing is.  You start the game and you’re thrown under the bus.  No control explanations.  No progression explanations.  No nothing.  You have to figure out everything yourself.

Presentation

Mothra vs The Tank Class.  Godzilla can get a few pointers from this.

I’m sure you’ve seen all of the online discussions already, about how terrible the presentation is.  How the frame rate is awful, the visuals are awful, and there needs to be a million patches made to the game already.  I know, because I commented on one said discussion on r/Vita the first day this game was out.

Visually, I honestly don’t have anything to complain about.  The developer’s goal was to create an FPS with a very pixel, minecraft-like presentation, and that’s done well.  I’ve compared the Vita and PS4 versions and they look about the same.  PS4 is slightly more smoothed out, but the Vita version looks fine on its own.

Performance, however, does need some clarification.  The PS4 version runs at 30 fps.  The PS Vita version does too, sometimes.  I’ve seen a lot of situations, though, where the frames drop a fair bit to around 20 fps when playing the Vita version.  Most of this happens to me when you’re going into a new room or moving the camera horizontally.  Another main aspect of the frames dropping is when bosses die.  To generate the mass amount of money that some bosses drop, the game freezes for a second or two and then resumes.

Note that it just drops about 10 fps or so.  The game is still playable, and I plan to keep it on my Vita.  Just know that it does have drops and won’t be a flawless experience.  If this game were PSTV Compatible, I’d be able to show you exactly how it plays, but until a patch comes from the devs, that won’t be possible.

Title: Delta Strike First Assault
Developer: Cerberus
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download:  200 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Currently Unavailable
PSTV Support: No

PlayStation Mobile died many months ago, but the games of PSM are still coming back in the form of native Vita games.  The Quiet Collections is one such example, which is a pretty nice collection of puzzle games.  Last week, it happened again.  A game that released on PlayStation Mobile has come to the PlayStation Vita.  This has also given me the opportunity to re-review a game, detailing what’s different or how much better the Vita version is compared to the PSM original.

This new game is something I reviewed the better part of 2 years ago.  A flying action game that felt more like a flying rail-shooter type game.  Once reviewed for PSM, here is my official review of the Vita version of Delta Strike: First Assault!

Story

I’m a lot of levels away from General…

In Delta Strike, you are a newly-graduated pilot for the Air Force.  As soon as you come into the ranks, a terrorist organization called P.A.I.N. is at large, causing a war between you and them.  Your first missions are sent to thwart their attacks on the country as well as to end their plans of experimentation in creating super-weapons that would make them the dominant power in the world.

The story isn’t bad.  It can keep you entertained between missions, but it is in no way Ace Combat.  It’s interesting, but not something to keep you going.

Gameplay

Don’t worry.  Only one wing is on fire…so far

Delta Strike is like a rail shooter, but with airplanes.  You could call it a flight simulator, but the way the game plays just have a strict tunnel-like rail shooter-like theme to it.  Flight Simulator makes you think Ace Combat and that’s really not what this is.  So let’s call it a Flying Rail Shooter.

The game progresses through missions.  When you start the game for the first time, you go through a scene and then into your first mission.  Once you complete that mission, you can replay it or go onto the next.  You then repeat this process until you’re done with the 30+ missions of the game.  It’s a pretty simple way to progress through a game.

When you go into a mission, you are put into a tunnel-like stage where you’re constantly flying through straight patches as well as turns and curves, fighting off enemies for a certain amount of length.  You’re armed with a machine gun with infinite ammo and missiles with limited ammo, so you must move around with your aim and do your best to fight off as many enemies as possible before you pass them.  You can choose not to, but that will give them more time to fire onto and damage your plane.

Giant orbs that say XP.  Totally realistic.  

Aside from enemies, there are also obstacles and items laid out in each stage.  Obstacles are in the form of buildings and gates with laser traps.  Hit either of these and you’ll take damage, most likely causing your plane to catch fire.  Take too much damage and you’ll explode and fail the missions.  Items are in the form of Green and Blue orbs.  Collecting these will increase the amount of money and experience you are rewarded at the end of the mission.

The main goal is to reach the end of the stage, which is shown to you in your HUD in a distance gauge.  It slowly goes down until it hits 0 and you get to the end of the stage.  Here, the camera pans out and you play a mini-game to bomb the target of that mission.  The mini-game has a red X on the screen with a white circle slowly closing in on it.  Once it touches the X and the X glows, you tap X to drop the bomb.  If you press X too early or late, you fail the mission.

When you finish a mission, you’re awarded Experience Point towards leveling up your rank and money that you can use to buy new planes, plane upgrades, or weapon upgrades that affect all owned planes.  The amount of money that you’re given is relatively gracious, so there’s no sense of having to farm missions over and over and over again to get what you want.  I managed to buy one of the high-tier planes after playing only about 10 missions, along with weapon upgrades along the way.

Not gonna lie.  I only wanted this because it looks like the F-22 Raptor

There are around 10 different planes you can purchase.  While weapons are the same between all planes (Gatlin Gun and Missiles), each plans has its own strengths and weaknesses in the form of handling, acceleration, top speed, and other parameters.  It is easily noticeable when you change from the default plane that doesn’t handle corners well to a top-tier plane that handles corners like nobody’s business.

Leveling Up to new ranks is another part of customization.  Leveling gives you a skill point and there are many tiers of skills that allow you to have an easier time when the missions get harder.  Some skills could simply increase the ease of flying or allow you to tilt the plane to avoid hitting buildings during quick turns.

Before we get to the difficulty and length, let’s talk about the stages.  In all reality, there aren’t very many different stages.  Much of the time, you’ll be playing the same two stages, only with different lighting and time-of-day settings.  The first 10 missions are comprised of a city stage and a canyon stage, just re-used with different lighting.  There’s not that much variety in environments you go through.  Just how difficult the enemies are.

Now, how difficult is this game?  It’s decently hard as the missions keep going, but it’s not going to make you throw your Vita across the room.  After Mission 10, the difficulty does go up, but so long as you do keep some money for purchasing better planes, it should be easy to adjust to.

Controls

First of all, the game is not compatible with the PlayStation TV.  However, when I inquired about it, the developer noted that he may add it in a future patch.  I can’t really fault him for not putting it in there from resources.  The developer of Delta Strike is a single person.  Just as I, alone, do everything on this site.  He worked on and made that game all by himself.  He deserves props for that.

The game uses the touch screen for a couple menus and these couple menus do not have button alternatives.  In missions, however, buttons are used.  The Left Analog Stick can be used to move your plane around and the Right Stick can be used as well as the triggers for tilting the plane.  The X button is only used in menus.  Square is used to fire off shots from the gatlin gun and Circle is used for missiles.

The control scheme isn’t bad.  Only thing I’ll say is that nothing is explained to you as you play the game.  You hit Start Game, and you’re in the first mission.  It’s one of those “Hit buttons to see what they do” kind of small games.  While this was semi-acceptable for PSM, it isn’t so much for a native title.

Presentation

Two wings on fire and still going!  Just like me in GTA Online

Visually, the game doesn’t look bad.  It looks about the same as it did on PSM, so we’re talking about high-end PSP level graphics.  Everything looks smooth, so there aren’t any jagged edges or anything.  Whether that will be the same when the PSTV patch comes, I’m not sure.

One issue from the PSM release has been fixed.  On PSM, it took 20-30 seconds to launch a mission.  On the PS Vita, it only takes about 8 seconds.  That’s a pretty big improvement.  The other performance issue was some frame drops/lag in the middle of some missions, and that is still present.

Title: Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Books
Developer: Gust, Koei Tecmo
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 2.0 GB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

How many Atelier games are on the Vita in English, at this point?  It’s a lot.  To take them in number, we have the Arland Trilogy, two games from the Dusk Trilogy (hopefully with Shallie Plus on the way), and this new game I’m about to talk about.  If you include the PSP version of Mana Khemia, a spin-off series from Atelier, we are looking at 7 different Atelier games in the West for the PS Vita.  That’s a lot of games.  Almost has the Neptunia and their 8 games beat.  Almost.

So, with Atelier, you probably know that the series has slowly gotten more user-friendly.  Games like Atelier Totori have very strict time restrictions, while Rorona Plus, Ayesha Plus, and Escha + Logy Plus have been increasingly casual on the time restraints.  The new game that comes out today is even more lax.  It’s so lax that story events aren’t restricted by time restraints at all.  Fans begged enough that Gust completely removed the time restraints.  Be sure to thank them later, if you’re one of those fans.

Today, we have the start of a new series in Atelier.  The newly-announced Atelier Firis is actually part of the same series as this game.  So, without further ado, here is my review of the PS Vita version of Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book!

Story

Talking books are normal?  Only in Atelier

The story takes place in a small church town called Kirchen Bell.  A young woman named Sophie lives and works in an Atelier that her late grandmother ran as the town’s alchemist.  Inexperienced and still new, Sophie is trying her best to learn alchemy to become a reliable source of medicine for the town.  One day from coming home with new materials, she discovers a mysterious book in the Atelier, which starts to fly and speak to her, calling itself Plachta and that they have no memories.

With Sophie and her friends shocked at Plachta’s existence, Sophie agrees to help the magical book regain its lost memories in exchange for teaching her the art of alchemy so she can be a better resource for the town of Kirchen Bell.  As things go forward, they soon realize that the lost memories of Plachta lead to much bigger things than simple alchemy recipes.

The story is casual, fun, and cute, as Atelier is known for.  However, much of the latter parts of the game also comes to a higher level that other RPGs try to go for.  We aren’t talking about global-domination-threat like in Final Fantasy, but it’s more than most Atelier games try to go for.

Gameplay

Making a cauldron inside another cauldron.  Makes sense

Atelier Sophie is a turn-based RPG heavily based around time management and item creation through alchemy.  Atelier fans know how it goes here.  You collect materials from dungeons and monsters so you can mix them together into new materials and items.  The same is shown here, though there is a fair focus on combat as well.

First, let’s discuss how time management has changed.  In past titles, every major story objective was timed.  You had until a certain day to get it done or you might get a game over.  This element was removed in Sophie.  You have all the time in the world to get story objectives done.  If you want to take 5 days, 5 weeks, or 5 years to do a single objective, you will not be punished in the slightest bit.  Time elements are instead pushed towards hours of the day and days of the week that dictate what types of materials and monsters appear in certain dungeons depending on what day or time of day you visit.

Progressing the story is in the form of unlocking Plachta’s memories.  Every memory is based on an alchemy recipe.  Just like other recipes unlock when you meet certain conditions, so do memory recipes.  The requirements change from memory to memory, though.  One memory may require you to fight monsters to fill the gauge while another may require you to donate money to the local church or fight a boss in a certain dungeon.  There are also a couple sections of the game that deviate from this to focus more on story to switch things up on you.

Free money laying on the road.  If only we were all that lucky

Traveling and moving is done via the Town Map and World Map.  In the town, you have several locations and facilities you can visit, like the church to buy talismans, the blacksmith to create and upgrade weapons, the café to take on requests for citizens or listen to rumors that make special items and monsters appear, or the Atelier where you can save your progress, sleep to make time pass, or make items through alchemy synthesis.

The World Map, like previous games, showcases all of the dungeons you can navigate to.  You will only have a single dungeon available at first, but new dungeons appear from gaining Plachta’s memories as well as speaking to certain characters at certain points of the story.  By the end of the game, the entire map will be filled with dozens of dungeons for you to go to.

A new element they added to travel is fatigue.  Every character has an LP gauge when they leave town.  Every time you perform an action, LP is used.  The lower your LP gets, the weaker your character gets in combat.  You stay out of town too long and you can go from doing 50 damage per attack to 1 damage per attack.  You have to watch that gauge or you can get into a bad situation with monsters in some of the dungeons.

4 against 1.  My kind of odds

Now let’s get to combat.  You have turn-based battles against enemy parties, and it’s pretty standard.  You have physical attacks, skills that use MP, and you get experience, items, and money when you win a battle.  That’s all the same.  What isn’t the same is how Sophie handles Team Actions.

In previous games, once you fought so much, you could do a quick-reaction support action, like taking damage for a party member or adding an additional attack.  This is all automated in this game.  Each time a character chooses actions, you can set them to an Offense or Defense stance.  If they’re in an Offense Stance, they’ll have a chance to do a support attack, and in Defense, they’ll have a chance to do a support defender action.  This also goes into attack chains, where the higher the chain goes, the better support actions can be accomplished, up to a full party team attack not unlike the All-Out Attacks from Persona 4.

The final aspects of gameplay I should go over are the Ability and Weapon/Armor Crafting.  The game has a pretty low Level Cap of 20.  Once you reach this, every “level” gives you Ability Points.  These can be used for abilities that range from upgraded skills to permanent stat increases to character-specific passive skills.  This can be critical for later bosses, like Monika’s ability that permanently reduces all damage she takes and increases her evasion rate or Sophie’s skill to increase the effectiveness of attack items.

You never are explained why her Rapier waves like a door stopper

When you craft weapons and armor, you can pass traits onto them.  There are a lot of combat and stat-based traits to materials you find.  This can range from stat enhancements to reducing the MP cost for skills.  The better traits you have, the more likely you’ll be to succeed in combat.  Considering the difficulty spikes quickly in the game’s combat, you’ll need all the help you can get, apart from just the ability to swap the difficulty setting of the game on the fly.

The length of this game is pretty long.  I finished the story and saw the credits roll after playing for around 42 hours.  After this, you are able to use your clear data to unlock any events, recipes, and other base game unlockables.  You also gain access to a post-game dungeon and a post-game boss for you to further enhance your skills to take down.

Controls

First and foremost, Atelier Sophie is completely compatible with the PlayStation TV.  On top of this, there is a function that can be used with the R3 button, which will automatically center the camera behind Sophie.  A nice little addition instead of only making the game run on the PSTV.  Gust and Koei Tecmo always deserve props for catering so well to the PSTV community.

Moving around is done with the Left Analog Stick and you can rotate the camera with the right analog stick.  The D-Pad is used mostly for navigating menus.  The triggers are used to access the quick-travel menu in town, letting you go straight to a specific place instead of manually walking there (though that is also an option for you).  Finally, the face buttons.  X and Circle are used for interacting with NPCs, jumping in the field and navigating menus.  Triangle brings up the customization menu, and Square interacts with NPCs.

This is explained pretty well, so I have no complaints here.  The Atelier games are always easy to figure out.

Presentation

Atelier, teaching gamers the benefit of reading books since 2004

Visually, the game looks outstanding, as Atelier Vita games always do.  When you display the game on the PSTV, it looks like you’re playing a recent console game, rather than a handheld game.  You have to give Gust props for always making the Atelier games visually beautiful, regardless of what platform.

Performance is what everyone is wondering about.  Gust is still improving as this runs a little better than the Vita version of Escha + Logy, but there are still a lot of frame drops in combat.  During battle animations and especially when a battle spawns, there are quite a few places where the frames will drop or the game will just freeze for a moment while it tries to use what it’s trying to trigger.

The other thing is the same song and dance as the previous games.  There are more voiced Japanese scenes than voiced English scenes.  With Sophie’s small 2 GB file size, there’s plenty of room to have a fully-voiced English translation.  Major scenes are voiced, but switch languages and you’ll see there’s probably 2 or 3 times as many scenes voiced in Japanese than English.  Which is a shame, as I really love the Nepgear VA’s work as Sophie.

Title: Steamworld Heist
Developer: Image & Form
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 176 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: No

Steamworld.  That’s a series I’ve known for a good while, despite not having played much of it.  The Nintendo 3DS has benefited greatly from the few Steamworld games that are out there, and the PlayStation world is starting to as well.  Steamworld Dig was a highly-praised game as was its sequel, Steamworld Heist.  The genre-changing series isn’t the largest in the world, but for what it is, it is revered as fun and entertaining.

The PlayStation World is about to get a taste of the newest entry in the franchise, which the Nintendo 3DS has had since December 2015.  Cross-buy between the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation Vita, here is my review of the Vita version of Steamworld Heist!

Story

In Steamworld Heist, the robotic population of Earth was forced into space when the planet exploded into millions of small pieces.  Most of these robots, known as Cowbots in traditional western fashion, went to the stars to try to make a living through farming and harvesting resources.  Just as they found enemies on Earth, however, they find enemies in space.

As Heist begins, a pirate Cowbot named Piper and her crew begin a fight against a faction called Scrappers, who plunder resources and kidnap people from all over the system, in the search of research and the creation of weapons to become the dominant power.  You control Piper and her crew as she goes after them and more as the story progresses through.

The one thing I like about the story is that the intro feels like an old-style TV show.  The western theme fits and hits home really nicely, both in the game’s characters and how the introductions are spoken by the narrator.

Gameplay

Every game of the Steamworld franchise changes its genre.  The first game was tower defense.  The second game was a metroidvania action game.  Heist changes things up quite a bit, as it is a strategy side-scrolling shooter.  You explore environments in a side-scrolling manner, but do so in turn-based missions that are like a mix of Strategy RPGs and 2D shooting games.

Progression through the game takes place on a point-to-point map with each point being missions to take on or hub locations you can visit where you can recruit new party members, advance the story, and purchase new items and weapons.  The more missions you complete, the more locations will open up for you to explore.

Going through the missions has you platforming and exploring small levels.  When a turn begins, you have a specific amount of space each character can move.  Beyond that, they can only travel so far if you want them to also be able to attack in the same turn.  They can go further if you want to sacrifice the ability to fire off gunfire until the next turn, so it all depends on what risks you deem are the most worthy.

Combat comes with firing on enemies and taking cover.  There are a lot of barrels and boxes in each level that you can hide behind.  It’s not hard to position yourself behind a barrel, fire off a shot against an enemy, and then have the barrel as a shield when the enemy fires at you.  They can also hide behind barrels, so you may have to think of strategic ways to hit them, like making a bullet ricochet off a wall to hit them from behind while other enemies have shields on them at all times, making this kind of strategy something you have to do a lot.

Missions have loot to gather aside from the mission objectives of either taking down enemies or gathering treasure.  Loot comes in the form of bags and chests that enemies drop upon being killed or just have laying around.  The more extra loot you find in a mission, the better grade you get when it’s done.  This is also thrown into the strategy as a lot of missions have alarms that give you timers.  Once you spend so many turns, enemies endlessly respawn, making things more difficult.

Mostly, Loot will be in the form of “Gallons”, which is the game’s currency, weapons, and items.  Weapons are different types of firearms, like handguns, shotguns, sub-machine guns and more.  Items are there to help you on missions, like increasing your inventory to take health items with you.  These items can also be bought with gallons at the various shops on the world map.

Once you finish a mission’s objectives, you retreat your party to the Evacuation Zone and are graded on how well you did.  The better you do on missions, the more experience your characters get towards leveling up and learning new skills, like increasing attack damage once you take fire from an enemy or just stat increases in general.

You also earn reputation when you complete missions, as there are required missions for the story as well as harder side-missions for extra rep.  Reputation is used to recruit new allies.  In each new hub area, there will be potential party members, but they’ll only join you if you’ve got enough reputation.  For some, it’s key to tackle those harder missions in order to get better party members on your team.

As far as difficulty is concerned, you’re in for a challenge, as any strategy game will do to you.  The first several missions are pretty simple, so long as you hide behind cover.  Soon after, though, new enemy types will emerge, requiring not only stronger weapons but also strategic planning just to get through the first enemies that guard loot, let alone bosses.  Even if you go in on the Casual difficulty setting, you won’t be casually flying through like a pink fluffy unicorn dancing on a rainbow.  Expect a challenge.

Now for the length of the game.  I’d gauge it at around 10-12 hours, give or take.  It all depends on the difficulty setting and how easily you get into the system, but don’t expect this to be some 2-hour indie game.  It’ll take you a good while to beat.

Controls

One thing to note is that this is not compatible with the PlayStation TV.  I have spoken to the developers about this and they may get a patch going at some point to add it.  They did say that their next Vita game would probably support the PSTV after I’d explained what it is and what its market is for.

Moving around the field or your ship/hub areas is done with the Left Analog Stick and the camera can be moved with the Right Analog Stick.  You can also move with the D-Pad.  The L trigger can be used to switch active characters and the R trigger can be used to start aiming your weapon.  X can activate items or fire your weapon and Square can end your turn.  Circle cancels actions and Triangle will skip an animation.

Nothing to complain about here, and you can customize the control scheme to your liking.

Presentation

Visually, this is a very artistic game.  All of the artwork of the world they’ve created here looks really interesting and very steampunk.  The fact that the soundtrack was done by a Steampunk band makes the theme even more fitting.

The only thing I have issues with is the occasional blurred character model.  Some character models appear with a good bit of blurring and some of the text areas also have some jagged edges and blurring, a small blemish on an otherwise polished presentation.

Performance is superb.  On the Vita, the load times are short, frame rate is steady and everything just runs great.  The developers did a great job of optimizing it.  All that remains is PSTV Support for PSTV owners.

App Title: Grand Theft Auto: iFruit
App Type: PlayStation Vita
File Size: 255 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

When was the last time I did a review on a PS Vita app?  To be honest, I don’t even remember…Okay, now that I’ve gone back to look, I haven’t posted an app review since February 2016!  4 months away and I’m finally getting back into the app scene.  However, I’ll be honest that I’d been thinking about reviewing this app for a long time, but never really had the drive to go download it.  I saw it in a random search for the Grand Kingdom demo, so I nabbed it while I was there.

To go into a bit of a background, this app has to do with Grant Theft Auto V.  While I have barely even touched GTA V’s story, I’ve played a ton of GTA Online on both PS3 and PS4.  In fact, I just reached Rank 100 in GTA Online last night.  This begs the question of why I’ve spent so much time in GTA Online and waited until now to download the PS Vita Companion App for GTA V.  No answer for that, really.  However, here is my review of the PS Vita app, Grant Theft Auto: iFruit!

Interface

When you boot up the iFruit App, first you go through the same Privacy Policy and Terms of Service you have to do in order to play GTA Online.  Then, the interface starts with an iFruit banner at the top and large square “app” icons for each feature of the game.  Said features are LS Customs, Chop the Dog, Settings, GTA V, Life Invader, and Store.

Each of these has a different interface available.  For starters, three of these apps don’t actually use the iFruit App.  When you open the icons for GTA V, Life Invader, and Store, they launch the PS Vita web browser and open web pages.  The only icons with actual interfaces are LS Customs, Chop the Dog, and Settings.

The LS Customs app is set up in a horizontal fashion with slots containing each set of cars.  You have sets for each of the three GTA V Story characters, and a slot for each of your GTA Online characters.  You can use the touch screen to navigate through your vehicles to choose one you wish to customize via the app.  Aside from this, there are buttons across the bottom for the various features.

It’s worth noting about the LS Customs app for a couple reasons.  First of all, you can customize your own License Plate, like me putting R2G on my plates and then using them in GTA Online.  This is something I have yet to find the ability to do in the main game, so that’s a nice reason for owning the app in general.

The upgrades you can do to your vehicles is also here, from Horn and Resprays to Engine and Transmission upgrades.  You can scroll through all upgrades, it says how much everything costs, and goes as far as showing you colors for paint jobs and lets you listen to all of the different horns you can use to customize the vehicle with.

The only thing is the while you can do these upgrades in the app, you still have to go into GTA V/Online and travel to an LS Customs to process the order, which kind of defeats the entire purpose of doing it in the app.  You might as well just go and do the same thing in the main game without it.

Chop the Dog opens up a screen showing the dog you gain in GTA V and some buttons on the right hand side, symbolizing what you can do with him, like feeding, training, gifts, etc.  It’s a pretty simple feature and both this and LS Customs have touch icons you can use to go back to the home area of the iFruit screen.

Settings is simple as well.  It is a simple scrolling menu like a web page that allows you to replay tutorials for LS Customs and Chop the Dog, and switch between your GTA Online characters and the platform between PS3 and PS4.

The design is very smartphone-ish and easy to figure out and use.  The tutorials there are also helpful so you don’t just go into the different apps blind.

Performance

Performance with the app in general is done quite well.  It flows nicely and there are no noticeable issues with lag, freezing, or hanging, despite how unstable Rockstar’s GTA Online servers tend to be regarding auto-save in the main game.  An app shouldn’t really have performance issues, but I believe it is always worth noting in this regard due to the many media streaming apps the Vita has that do have performance lag, like Netflix and Hulu.

One thing I’ll say that’s poor about the performance is that Life Invader doesn’t load.  Whenever I tap it and the web browser launches, it partially loads and never finishes.  I’m always left with a blank white page.  GTA V and Store load just fine every time I use them, but Life Invader has never worked for me.

Title: Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops
Developer: Kojima Productions, Konami
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: PSP
Download: 803 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: No

Metal Gear is one of my favorite gaming franchises ever, and the PS Vita is a great Metal Gear console in and of itself.  With the Vita, you can play the first Metal Gear Solid as a PS One Classic, 2 and 3 along with Metal Gear 1 and 2 via the PS Vita’s HD Collection, and Peace Walker via the PSP backwards-compatibility feature.

For the longest time, though, North American users could not play two of the first Metal Gear PSP games, Portable Ops and Portable Ops Plus.  Thanks to a PSN Update a week ago, the two games became direct downloads for the Vita and PSTV, though they remain incompatible with the PSTV.  PS Vita owners, however, can now enjoy both of those games.

Portable Ops maintains a special place for me because it is what got me into the series.  I first played PO, and then went on to play the rest of the games.  To start off this retro review duo, here is my review of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops!

Story

Beautifully-drawn CG scenes really bring the story to life

Portable Ops takes place 6 years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3.  Snake aka Big Boss awakens trapped in a Jail Cell somewhere in South America.  After escaping his cell with an ex-Green Beret, he finds out that the FOX Unit has gone renegade, stolen a top-secret nuclear weapon, and plans to use said weapon against the world.  Recruiting local rebels along the way, he fights to stop the weapon’s launch.

The story of Portable Ops I enjoy because of a few reasons.  First of all, it pulls plot points from MGS3, but doesn’t leave you in the confusing dark if you have yet to play that game.  Second, it provides backstories for two iconic characters from the first Metal Gear Solid, primarily Roy Campbell and one other that plays a big part in that game.  Third, the hand-drawn scenes and plot in general can be philosophical at times, but also tear at your heart-strings.

Gameplay

Your first wall peek is a trip down Metal Gear nostalgia

MPO is a stealth-action game with shooting elements and management elements thrown into the mix, most similar to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.  While you’re on missions, you will be sneaking past enemies, taking down bosses in third person and first person shooting fashion, and everything else you know from the series.

As I said above, this is a mission-based game.  You do have a map where you can choose a location, but each time you go into the gameplay, you’ll be on a mission with objectives, though you can also go into other areas for the fun of it.  It still registers as a mission, but there is no objective so you can go and collect items and fight enemies to your liking.

Your base objective of the game is to amass an army of rebel recruits to your side and to stop the nuclear weapon.  To do this, you not only have to sneak into areas to obtain information and eventually stop the enemy’s plans, but also have to figure out the lay of the land and discover areas and Intel that will lead you to those goals.  For that, you need recruits, and lots of them.

Recruiting is tedious, but you can’t help but compare this to SAO’s bridal carry feature

Recruiting enemies in MPO is different than that of Peace Walker or The Phantom Pain.  The Futon Recovery System is not a thing, and you have little to no resources when you start the game.   When you’re out in the field and there’s a soldier you want to recruit, you have to knock them out, either with an MK22 Tranquilizer Pistol or by knocking them out the old fashioned way.  Then, you have to pick them up and drag them to your truck.

This is, as you would guess, a very tedious process.  There are some enemies that spawn near the truck in a stage, but you need different types of recruits.  Some are better at certain things than others.  Over the course of the game, you’ll need those good at sneaking but also those with medical expertise to develop healing items for you, mechanic expertise to develop weapons and equipment, and those with spying expertise that are good at gathering information and Intel.

The key to this is choosing who you want to do the recruiting.  You control them, of course, but some recruits are more athletic, allowing you to move faster when you’re dragging a downed enemy.  Snake moves rather slow when he is dragging, but Para-Medic on the other hand, can drag them a lot faster.  (Try explaining that.  Seasoned combat veteran isn’t strong enough to move quickly but a medical officer that sits on a plane for the entirety of MGS3 can do it quickly).

This brings to an interesting and unique point the series didn’t have before.  You can play as any of your recruits, and there are a lot of key characters from the series that you can recruit.  Many characters from MGS3 that are recruit-able from Para-Medic and Sigint to Eva and Ocelot.  There are also some others, from MPO itself and from the Metal Gear Acid series.

Para-Medic got a special bust increase just for Portable Ops.  No joke.

As I said before, you have different types of units and for that, you have different teams.  Your main groups will be Sneaking, used for taking out on missions.  Spy Unit is where you can place recruits in certain areas to gather intel, key to finding many of the high-tier weapons and for advancing the story.  The Engineer Unit is responsible for developing equipment, from weapons, thermal goggles, and certain items needed to advance the story.  The Medical Unit is responsible for developing healing items, like Medical Kits for health and Rations for stamina.  And then you have your Prisoner section, where recruits go for a few days before you can coerce them into joining your cause.

When you’re on a mission, you will have an objective.  This can range from reaching a goal to gauge security of a bridge you need to cross and interrogating government officials to blowing up armories to weaken enemy troops and taking on bosses to reach the next area.  Most of these objectives are pretty simple to find, maintaining the gameplay but also allowing players to take this on the go in short bursts.

Moving into the field has gameplay almost exactly the same as Metal Gear Solid 3.  Portable Ops was basically a way to emulate MGS3 gameplay on a handheld console.  You have the same basic field of view, radar, CQC, etc.  You also still have both a Health and Stamina gauge like in Snake Eater.

The main difference with the stamina gauge is there are no survival elements here.  Instead of eating food for recovery, you find rations in the field (or have your Medical Unit develop them for you) and use them from your item menu to recovery Stamina.  If you play the game on Easy, you’ll never have to worry about stamina, but on Normal, you do have to worry about it.

Just like in Snake Eater, bosses also have a stamina gauge as well as a health gauge.  The importance of stamina kills on bosses in this game are not only to up the difficulty of the game, but you also get different cut-scenes if you stamina kill a boss, and half of the bosses will actually join your team if you choose to stamina kill them instead of HP Kill them.  Since all story-oriented characters have high stats for the various groups, it is very helpful to get those people on your side.

First-person aiming isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but is accurate once you learn how

CQC is similar to MGS3, except you can no longer kill enemies in a CQC hold.  If you sneak up behind an enemy and use CQC to restrain them, you only have the option to interrogate them or choke them until they fall unconscious.  Killing can only be done with weapons.

Now let’s talk about stealth.  In MGS3, you could do the game without stealth.  If you wanted to just run and gun, you could.  You can do that here, too, but the further you get in the game, the tougher the enemy reinforcements get.  If you think you can run up and melee an enemy before the alert sounds, it’s all good.  But after a certain point, you go from fighting enemies with pistols and AK-47’s to enemies with M870 Shotguns and RPG-7’s.  It’s advised to always go stealth to not have to waste resources.

Finally, let’s go into difficulty.  I wouldn’t gauge this as the hardest game in the series, but that doesn’t make it easy.  Learning the ins and outs of each area takes time and even with a mastery of it, it can be a little iffy on whether you can get through a mission unscathed or not.  Bosses, of course, you have to learn.  Every boss has patterns and certain methods required for fighting them.  The first boss, for example, cannot be damaged by close-range weapons and can actively freeze and immobilize your weapons.  Each boss requires a different strategy and weapon range.  It’s all about learning patterns and waiting for openings.

Another aspect of the difficulty is inventory.  Each mission lets a character take only 4 items with them.  That’s weapons, ammo, healing items, rations, equipment.  You can only take four items.  Granted, you can have different characters hold different items and switch out, but it’s challenging especially when you’re trying to decide which weapons to use on a boss as well as leaving slots open for items you find during a mission.

So, how long is this game?  Taking into account recruitment, cutscenes, learning the ways of the trade, and everything else, I would gauge it somewhere around 10-12 hours.  It’s not a short game, but not an overly long game.  It’s a nice length for a handheld action game and for a Metal Gear game in general.

Controls

Control schemes were always a huge debate whenever the PSP got console gameplay games.  Obviously, Metal Gear Solid 3 used all of the buttons available on the PS2 so how would the PSP be able to handle it?  We shall get to that in just a moment.  Beforehand, I would like to say that Portable Ops is not compatible with the PlayStation TV.  I’ve seen dozens of news articles that claim it is.  It is not.  So if you own a PSTV and not a Vita, you should know that right now both Portable Ops and MPO+ are not compatible.

The control scheme goes like this, by default.  The Left Analog Stick moves your character and the D-Pad moves the camera.  This can be redirected to the Right Analog Stick for proper dual analog play.  The L button is used to lock onto an enemy in front of you and the R button can go into first-person shooting mode.

Now let’s get into the odd face button controls.  X lets you change from a standing, crouching, or crawling stance.  Square fires off a weapon when L/R are held down or uses CQC if unequipped.  Triangle performs actions, like opening doors, climbing ladders, or clinging against walls.  Finally, circle is used to access your inventory.  Hold Circle to see all inventory.  Tap Circle to equip or un-equip the last selected weapon/item.

This control scheme works, but it is very strange, and was back then, too.  If you’re used to the control schemes of the newer games, it’s going to feel very weird until you get a feel for it.  Even then, it still is strange.  Workable, but strange.

Presentation

I have never done this in the game, but it just looks cool, right?

Visually, the game doesn’t look all that bad.  For a PSP game, it held up the MGS3-style graphics quite well.  I’d compare it actively to the Nintendo 3DS port of Snake Eater, so that’s saying something.  When the camera zooms in on characters, you can see a lot of detail in each model.

Performance-wise, it also does very well.  Frame-rate is nice and smooth, load times are only a few seconds long, and it has a new soundtrack that is reminiscent and keeps the Snake Eater feel going as you play through each separate level.

App Title: Netflix
App Type: Nintendo 3DS
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Not Available
Block Size: 184 Blocks

Netflix is the biggest video streaming service around, next to YouTube, and has released on pretty much all current game consoles for use.  Granted, it still has yet to come to the PlayStation TV (despite all claims that Netflix has been supposedly working on a patch for over a year now), but all consoles, home and handheld, can view their favorite movies and shows that are available on the service.

I use Netflix every day, for movies like Para Elisa to TV Shows like Star Trek: Voyager.  It is my go-to service when I want a break from constantly reviewing games and want to watch something entertaining.  I even prepared for Koei Tecmo’s upcoming Attack on Titan PS Vita/PS3/PS4 game earlier this week with watching the first season of AoT.

Since I use it so much, I thought it proper to begin with Netflix when starting up 3DS App Reviews.  There aren’t a ton of apps for the 3DS, but it does have this one, and a few others I’ve also reviewed for the Vita.  So, here is my review of Netflix for the Nintendo 3DS!

Interface

JP 1-3 are good to go, but no Jurassic World, yet

When you first boot the app, you get a login screen, letting you log into the service with your email and password, the same as any Netflix app.  Once you’ve put that in (or started a free trial/account), you’re taken to the main browsing page where you can find something to watch and watch it.

This is set up as horizontal rows, detailing genres, media you’ve already watched, new releases, etc.  It looks just like the interface of other apps, from the PS4 Netflix app to the Netflix app built into my Vizio Smart TV.  You just scroll through, select something, and enjoy.

The biggest difference in the interface here is that you tap the Y button on the 3DS to bring up the search option (rather than moving all the way up to the top of the list like you must do in other Netflix apps).

While playing a video, you can tap the A button to bring up the slider, where you can use the directional buttons to move the slider for reverse and fast-forward, and use the A and B buttons for pausing and going back to the main Netflix menu.

Performance

A pixelated Colossal Titan is still colossal

Now, how does this perform?  If you recall, the PS Vita Netflix app is particularly lag-heavy while browsing the main menu, though video quality makes up for it.  On the 3DS, the menus perform rather well.  As you use either the touch screen or buttons to navigate, everything runs nice and smooth.  That part of the app was well-optimized.

What isn’t optimized are the load times and video quality.  Firstly, the initial load time for the app can take up over an entire minute and a good minute more once you can browse to see the thumbnails for titles.  This also shows itself when loading a title.  The shortest I’ve ever had to wait for a title to start with the 3DS app is about 30 seconds.  So, between clicking play and actually being able to watch, you have to wait a fair bit of time.

That brings to another problem.  On several occasions, the app froze while trying to retrieve and load a TV episode and it froze up my entire system.  I would have to do a hard power-off and completely power the system back on before it would allow me back into the app to try again.

Once something loads, you can watch, but that’s another thing to mention.  The video quality is decent, but not really that great.  When I was watching Jurassic Park on my 3DS, it was very pixelated and blurred out for the entire viewing.  It’s nowhere near the video quality you’d get on almost every other Netflix app available.

Title: Ar Nosurge Plus: Ode to an Unborn Star
Developer: Gust, Koei Tecmo
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 3.0 GB
NA Availability: Digital Download | Retail (Limited Edition only)
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Gust is one of those developers that have really catered to the handheld market in the West not only in this generation, but past ones too.  Last gen, they made Mana Khemia: Studient Alliance for the PSP and Atelier Annie for the Nintendo DS.  With this gen, well, you just start counting the Atelier games on the PS Vita.  Totori, Meruru, Rorona, Ayesha, Escha + Logy, Shallie in Japan.  Firis that just got announced.  The list goes on and on.

Apart from the Atelier games, the PS Vita has also been graced with some more Gust RPGs set in the same universe as the Ar Tonelico  series that primarily released on the PS2 and PS3.  Serving as prequels is the “Surge” series, as I like to call it.  This began with Ciel Nosurge in Japan and its sequel that got localized on both the PS3 and PS Vita.

Diving into a Gust RPG series that plays like a traditional RPG with combat as the focus as opposed to item synthesis, here is my review of Ar Nosurge Plus: Ode to an Unborn Star!

Story

The story of Ar Nosurge takes place in a world where the human race no longer has a planet with which they can live on.  As their previous planet began to die, the leader of the humans known as the Divine Empress used powerful magic known as Song Magic to convert their planet into energy as a means for transporting them to a new planet for them to live on.  However, as this was in progress, it failed, effectively destroying their planet and forcing the rest of humanity to live aboard a giant spaceship.

Several hundred years later, humans are at war with a race of aliens known as the Sharl.  While humankind is sealed inside a magical barrier around the city of Felion on their side, the Sharl and the human followers they’ve recruited into their own church are constantly attempting to get inside.  You begin this game as Delta, a man whom is a former military soldier for the forces of Felion as he begins traveling to help end the Sharl threat but also to find out the true meaning behind everything that’s going on with the ship, their planet, and more.

The story of Ar Nosurge is often perceived as skeptical because it is actually a sequel to Ciel Nosurge, which never came to the West.  Some believe that knowledge of Ciel is needed and, while it does help with the secondary protagonist, there are scenes that explain all you truly need to know within Ar Nosurge.

Gameplay

Ar Nosurge plays out like a traditional RPG with a few twists.  It has turn-based combat and dungeon exploration, while the combat itself is kind of a cross between being turn-based and action-based (mostly resembling that of Valkyrie Profile).  But, as far as a genre is concerned, let’s just call it a tradition console RPG.

Progression through Ar Nosurge goes in chapters, but not like normal RPGs.  In Ar Nosurge, you have two teams of protagonists journeying at the same time, but in different places and following different story events.  These two separate scenarios often cross with one another, with one group finding items needed to proceed the story for the other group.  With the ability to “Zap” or switch control between them, completing the game is a matter of navigating through both scenarios until the game informs you that there is nothing you can do to proceed through the story until you do more with the other group.

Progressing through each group’s chapter is in the form of exploring dungeons, fighting enemies, and progressing the story.  This is pretty standard for an RPG.  As you play the game, more dungeons and towns will become available to you, each with shops and story-based locations for you to go to and explore.

The two biggest focuses of the game are Diving and Combat.  Diving is somewhat similar to some gameplay systems of Ar Tonelico.  As you talk to NPCs, you will gain the ability to “link” with the other person’s mind.  You can then go to a Dive Shop and pay money you earned from battles to dive into that character’s sub-conscious mind.

These dives play out as individual storylines that showcase the character’s personality as well as being like a story arc in and of itself.  In each dive, you will be introduced to that world, learn about your role and the other characters, and be forced to take action to solve those problems to gain that person’s trust.  You do this in the form of dialogue choices.  In many scenes of a dive, there are dialogue choices, that sometimes cost points you earn from battle.  There is one “right” choice which pushes that story arc forward.  You do this until it is finished.

The interesting aspect of this dive system is that it is the only way for you to learn new skills for combat and the amount of time they can take.  One of the first dives I participated in I stayed and completed in one shot, which took me over an hour to do.  When I say they’re like their own stories, they truly are.  They aren’t two or three scenes and a skill.  It’s long and in-depth to really immerse you in that character’s mind.

Aside from skills, these dives also give you special orbs based on memories you can use to “Purify” a group.  This entails going to a purification site to talk with various characters about story events as well as using the orbs to give special stat boosts and effects to your playable characters.

Combat is another thing.  Above, I mentioned it was similar to Valkyrie Profile.  When you go into a battle, you will choose a Song Magic skill to use for that battle.  You only have one by default and earn others by completing Dives.  Once you choose a skill, the battle begins where there are waves of enemies in front of you, representing all of the random encounter enemies for the entire dungeon.

When your turn comes up, you have limited numbers of attacks and your end goal are to “Break” enemy defenses.  This has two benefits.  First is that a broken enemy has their defense severely damaged, making all of your attacks do huge amounts of damage.  However, if you complete an entire wave before the enemy goes or are lucky when a broken enemy is destroyed, the turn restarts, giving you an extra turn.

This is important because non-boss fights have turn limitations.  Every time the enemies move, your max number of turns decreases.  So, if you want to knock out everything at once, you have to be good at strategizing and getting those breaks easily.  There’s also a gauge showing how much your Song Magic has grown in the form of %.  You can unleash Song Magic at any time once you fill up a gauge by fighting.  Once unleashed, the song will wipe out whatever % that enemy gauge is on.

Defending is also important, as only one healing item may be used per turn.  When the enemy moves, you will have a certain number of defends to defend against their attacks.  Timing is key here and the four health bars that are taken down from enemy attacks are barrier-locked.  This means that if you take damage just past the first barrier, no healing item can restore that lost barrier.  You have to be careful about this, especially in boss fights.

After a battle is over, you gain money and experience.  You’re also graded.  The better you do, the better multiplier you get.  The multiplier will increase Experience gained.  If the battle gives you 500 EXP and you get an S Grade on the battle, it’ll give you a 4x multiplier, giving you 2,000 EXP instead of the 500.

This is also where I need to tell you about difficulty spikes.  Normally at the end of a chapter, there will be sections where you will gain huge amounts of experience from battles.  When this happens, it means that there is about to be a huge difficulty spike in boss and enemy alike.  In these situations, it is best to take some time to grind for levels to prepare.  I’m not talking hours of grinding, but enough to take advantage of that higher EXP.  Some of the areas where the difficulty spikes happen upgrade all normal enemy hordes to be a lot harder as well, making leveling for a boss very difficult.  Just a piece of advice.  When you suddenly get a lot of EXP, either make a backup save or take advantage of it.

There isn’t a whole lot else to say, so let’s get to length.  When I finished up the game, my save file was at 34 hours.  Granted, I did not work very hard at getting items for the extra endings, so if you do want a full experience and want the true ending and I was just barely leveled enough to handle the final boss, the game may very well take a good 40 hours to complete.

After you complete the game, there is no New Game Plus.  You just unlock artwork among other things in the EXTRA menu of the Title Menu.  All you do after is on previous save files to work on different endings, or start the game from scratch.

Controls

Ar Nosurge is fully compatible with the PlayStation TV (While the Japanese Ciel Nosurge is not, just in case you’re thinking about importing it), though it doesn’t use any special buttons.  The game doesn’t use any touch controls, so there’s no need to worry about an awkward PSTV experience.

The D-Pad doesn’t do anything outside of menus, but the Analogs have the common features.  The Left Analog moves you around while the Right Analog can zoom with the camera.  The two triggers are used for combat, allowing you to access powerful skills once your Song Level is high enough.  X lets you talk to NPCs or choose options in the menu while the Circle button lets you jump in the field or cancel menu selections.  Triangle brings up the customization menu and the Square button lets you see small dialogues between party members in dungeons.

Presentation

Visually, the game looks great, as all Gust PS Vita games do.  There is a lot of detail and the cel-shading is done really well.  Just as the Atelier games do, Ar Nosurge looks visually beautiful on the PS Vita and PSTV both.

I will also note that the game has a really immersive soundtrack.  For a game about using Song for magic, it does have some brilliantly-composed vocal pieces thrown in.  From Class: Ciel no Surge to Class: Expaja, there’s a lot that a game music fan can enjoy.

Now let’s get onto the issues present in the game.  First, audio.  I don’t have many complaints about the voice work, but there are a lot of scenes where the voice-work do not match the dialogue they’re supposed to be saying.  If you read along and listen to the dub, you’re going to get confused.

Now, the big problem is frame-rate.  I recently reviewed Atelier Sophie, which had a much smoother frame-rate than past Gust titles, but Ar Nosurge does not.  There are a lot of frame drops and some of them are pretty substantial.  At one point, I was in a battle and the game would literally drop down to 0-5 fps for a couple seconds for the course of the entire battle.  Granted, this didn’t happen very often, but it gives you an idea.  The Vita struggles to run the game.

It’s that time of the month again.  It’s time to look back on all of the reviews I’ve done in the past 29 days and go over them one more time.  Nintendo didn’t get a huge amount of coverage for June, but I did send a dozen reviews or so out to all of you this first month of Summer.

Here are all of the reviews for June 2016:

Nintendo 3DS Reviews

Netflix
YouTube
Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma

PlayStation Vita / PlayStation TV Reviews

Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book – Video Review
Ar Nosurge Plus: Ode to an Unborn Star – Video Review
Delta Strike: First Assault
Funk of Titans – Video Review
Grant Theft Auto: iFruit
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (PSP)
Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir – Video Review
Paranautical Activity
Steamworld Heist
Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma

Other

Game Boy Color – Video Review

It’s been a nice month indeed.  Although I do have yet to do a video review of Zero Time Dilemma, know that it is coming the moment they update the game to work on the PSTV.  That could be today, tomorrow, or next week, which all depends on our friends over at Aksys Games.  Just remember not to be too hard on them for this.  They’re already going through a lot of trouble with Amazon’s delays of their Limited Editions of the game.

Look for the PSTV Recap tomorrow, and lots of reviews in July.

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It’s finally time for the last article of the month!  Yesterday, I posted my review recap for June, so now it’s time to talk about the PlayStation TV!  We’ve had a pretty good month for PSTV Compatibility.  While I haven’t received review copies of a few new games to test (Adventures of Mana, God Eater, Lego Star Wars), we still have a nice month of updates.

So, let’s get to it!  Here are all of the games added to the PSTV Compatibility List this month:

Japan

Dragon Quest Heroes II Demo
Nil Admirari no Tenbin Teito Genwakukitan
Nisekoi Yomeiri!?
Norn9: Act Tune
Norn9: Norn + Nonette Last Era
Oretachi ni Tusbasa Wa Nai: Under the Innocent Sky
Oumagatoki Kakuriyo No Fuchi
Owari No Seraph Unmei No Hajimari
Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2014
Rear Pheles Red of Another
Refrain no Chika Meikyuu To Majo No Ryodan
SA7: Silent Ability Seven
Storm Lover V
Storm Lover 2nd V
Sweet Clown Gozen Sai-Ji No Okashi Na Doukeshi

North America

Adventures of Mana
Bard’s Gold
Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors
Funk of Titans
Grand Kingdom
Legend of Doodle
Lumo
One Piece: Burning Blood
Rainbow Skies
Steins;Gate 0
Volgarr
Wing Kings
Zero Escape 3: Zero Time Dilemma (Patch in the works)

A good month, right?  And this month is the first time I’ve done a video recap for the PSTV.  If you like it, let me know and I’ll keep doing it!

Title: LEGO Star Wars The Force Awakens
Developer: TT Fusion
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 1.5 GB
NA Availability: Digital Download | Retail
EU Availability: Digital Download | Retail
PSTV Support: Yes

Back two generations of gaming ago, the now-popular Lego series was just starting with its movie tie-ins.  A game to help publicize the prequel trilogy for Star Wars was sent out, not knowing that it would start a trend that still goes on today.  Batman.  Harry Potter.  Lord of the Rings.  Marvel’s The Avengers.  Ninjago.  The number of franchises covered by these games goes up multiple times a year, and it all started with the iconic science fiction series created by George Lucas.

The series has been through a lot since then.  3 different Lego games along with the Battlefront reboot, The Clone Wars and Rebels TV shows, and of course, the much-anticipated launch of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens and the return of the original trio of actors to the big screen.

The newest Lego game to grace the gaming world is on that very movie.  An oddity for a Lego game to feature only a single movie, but here is my review of LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens!

Story

As usual, the scenes are taken from the console release.

The plot of Lego: The Force Awakens is the same as the movie, which I won’t say too much about in case some of you haven’t watched the movie yet.  Taking place decades after the events of Return of the Jedi, a group of imperials known as The First Order have filled the gap of power in the galaxy from the fall of the Galactic Empire and there is a war going on between them led by the mysterious Kylo Ren and a resistance army.

The journey of Rey, Finn, and others from the movie is told well and, since this game only covers the one movie, almost every scene from the movie is in this game.  All music and voice-acting are taken from said movie to provide a very nostalgic feeling for fans of the movie.

Gameplay

Classic Characters in new settings never ceases to be fun

Lego TFA is a 3D action game with puzzle, combat, and many other genre elements thrown into the mix.  Throughout the game, you will have gameplay for all Lego games that mimics puzzles and beat-em-up games, but also elements from rail shooters, third person shooting games, driving games, and more.  With all the mini-games thrown in, there’s a lot of variety here.

So, how does this version compare to the console release?  It’s the question you want to ask, and I know it.  Basically, it’s a console experience but not as “complete” as the PS4 version of the game.  First of all, all of the levels here are also levels in the console version and they play exactly the same between both versions.  You’re not getting any watered down gameplay.  Every bit of gameplay here is just as much a console experience as the levels on PS4.

There are three ways it is different.  First, the extra story missions, like the Battle of Endor Prologue are set as bonus levels that are optional from one of the hub worlds.  The PS4 version starts with this level, but the handheld version just sticks with the Force Awakens levels to drive.  You have to actually find the launch pad for it in a hub world to go through it.  It’s there, but it just isn’t shown as obvious as it is on the home console version.

Second, the levels are more simplified.  The first Endor level, for example, has you fighting enemies and making platforms up to an area where an AT-ST puzzle must be solved to proceed further.  In the handheld release, though, you start at the AT-ST puzzle, so bits and pieces of levels (mostly minor) were cut out of the handheld release.  Third, one or two of the extra story levels were cut from the handheld release.  Nothing pertaining to the main campaign, but some of the extra content is exclusive to the home console version of the game.

Each hub has a ship where you can leave to the Galaxy Map

Main progression happens in Hub Worlds.  Every planet has its own open-world hub that you can explore.  Here, you have directions towards opening up the next story mission, doing various side missions littered around the environments, or just spawning mini Star Wars vehicles to ride around the hub worlds for fun.  You can do these in any order, but the game is always reminding you of where you need to go for the next story mission.

Story levels are normally in pairs of threes and consist of running levels that have you exploring levels in groups with fighting enemies and solving puzzles or flying levels, where you are driving a ship, fighting other ships and navigating through large areas.  This is fairly balanced, never offering too many of the same type of mission so you don’t keep wondering how long it will be before you get another space battle to play through.

Most of this is the same song and dance as previous games, but one thing I’ll say is that they’ve really made things refreshing by adding new gameplay systems aside from just character-specific skills.  Building Lego objects now has multiple objects from the same pile of Legos.  You might have to build a pipe for electricity with your Lego set, have to break it, and use the same pieces to build a level to turn on a door.  This also adds a more of a puzzle presence to the game.

The most thrilling new feature, however, are blaster battles.  During these, you go under cover and go up and down while shooting at enemies also hiding behind cover.  This gives a very clear Third-Person Shooter feel, and is one thing that really sets this apart from not only the other Lego Star Wars games but previous Lego games in general.  It’s refreshing and new.  It was always exciting when I would be rushing through a level and suddenly I would be thrown into a TPS sequence against endless Stormtroopers and dropships.

These shooting sequences aren’t hard, but they’re quite refreshing 

There will be a lot of doing this, but replay value is there as well.  All of those side quests I told you about in the hub worlds offer a variety of different types of gameplay and are crucial to unlocking characters and scenarios.  Getting challenges done in story mission will unlock the extra story chapters while doing side-quests nets you Carbonite Bricks, which can then be unfrozen to unlock classic Star Wars characters, like the Tie Fighter pilot or Anakin Skywalker from The Phantom Menace.  This feature really keeps me playing.  I finish the story and get into that “I need to get a review out to my viewers ASAP” mode, but the Star Wars fans in me just wants to keep getting classic characters to play as.

On the topic of characters, there is something I want to nitpick here.  You unlock story-based characters after every mission, and you can go in free mode to play as any unlocked character.  As nice as it is to see characters constantly unlocking, a lot of characters are very redundant.  I get unlocking a couple versions of the same character from different movie points, but do we really need 6+ versions of Finn?  Or more than 6 versions of Rey?  They are all different in graphical details, but it seems redundant and is taking up space for a bigger variety of different characters rather than half a dozen reskins for the same character where only one or two actually offers different weapons/gameplay.

Speaking of the replay value, let’s talk about how long the game is.  The main story campaign has about 30 levels or so, each which average around 10 minutes.  Throwing in the extra story missions you can unlock as well, which will add a good 10-15 more levels, the whole game should take you a good 6-8 hours to finish.  Not super short, but not super long.  It’s long enough for me to be okay with the length, even with the few cut levels.

Controls

Controls are very versatile in the game.  As with all PS Vita Lego games, you can do everything with buttons or everything with touch.  The nice thing here is that puzzles that would normally require the touch screen and inoperable on the PSTV without makeshift touch controls, have button options as well.  This makes the game much more friendly to PSTV users.

We have typical controls here.  Analog Stick/D-Pad to move and Right Analog to move the camera.  L and R can switch non-active party members while Triangle can toggle between controlling the active party members.  X is used for jumping and double-jumping.  Square is used for attacking with your main weapon and Circle for your sub-weapon (for those characters that can use two weapons at once).

The controls are easy to use and, as always, TT Games explains it very well.

Presentation

You just can’t have a Star Wars game without epic space battles

Visually, I can’t complain.  While we don’t have the perfect renders of PS4 Lego games, Lego TFA looks very pretty and in-depth on the PS Vita and PSTV both.  All of the models look great and you wouldn’t be able to tell it was a handheld release with watching it being played on the PSTV.

There is only one issue I have with the presentation, and that is with glitching.  During one of the boss fights, the game glitched and put me in an endless loop while trying to transition between two different stages of the boss.  When this happened, it locked the controls, forcing me to replay the entire stage up to the boss again to progress forward.  This happened with a couple different bosses, so it’s worth noting.

The rest of the performance is nice.  2-3 second load times, pretty much no frame drops, and perfect audio brought in from the movie.

Title: Super Mario Bros.
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Type: Virtual Console (NES)
NA Availability: Digital
EU Availability: Digital
Block Usage:  45

Do any of you remember your very first video game?  I’m not talking just the first game you bought with your own money, or the first game you played on your first handheld, but your true introduction to the gaming world.  The very first video game you ever played in your life, be it that old lunar rover game on Macintosh computers or the original pong.

I remember my very first game, because it was two-games in one.  My first console was the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the game it came with was the double-pack of Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt.  I spent endless hours learning and playing the original Super Mario Bros when I was small.  Learning secrets, mastering levels, and all around just enjoying what the game had to offer.  Of course, I didn’t think much of it then, since I was only around 5 or 6 years old.

There’s something special about revisiting your very first game all over again, which I did this week.  Once I started getting some income again, I decided to start July’s month off with a retro review of the very first video game I ever played.  Available on the Virtual Console section of the eShop, here is my retro review of Super Mario Bros!

Story

We all went through this disappointment for 7 worlds straight

In the original Super Mario Bros, you realize that the story hasn’t changed all that much in the past 20-30 years.  The Mushroom kingdom gets invaded and the princess kidnapped.  It’s a typical Mario plotline.  Princess Peach is kidnapped and you have to go rescue her from Bowser’s Castle.  Except in the original, you have to travel through 8 different castles to find her, each one hopeful for being the one she’s in.

As all of you old-school gamers know, the plot is never explained to you in the game.  However, if you check the booklet/manual built into the Virtual Console release, it will detail all of this for you.  It was a nice little add-on for a time when few if any games even had storylines to go along with their gameplay.

Gameplay

The satisfaction of stomping your first Goomba

The original Super Mario Bros is a 2D side-scrolling platformer with very mild combat elements thrown into the mix.  Unlike the newer games, there isn’t a big focus on combat in the original game.  90% of what you’ll be doing is platforming and avoiding enemies, rather than fighting them.

The progression of the game is through stages, one after another, each in specific worlds.  The game has 8 worlds for you to go through and 4 stages in each.  You have 3 stages that are comprised of outside, underground, and underwater areas, and the 4^th stage of each world houses a castle and boss fight against Bowser.

Most of the Mario elements you know started here.  You can jump and stomp on enemies in your path and break blocks by jumping up into them, which will either break, offer coins for your score, or offer power-ups in the form of Mushrooms to make you grow into an Adult form, Flower to give you the fireball ability, or Green Mushrooms to give you an extra life.  These are all the means of helping you in your quest to reach the end of the level in the form of a flagpole that moves you to the next level.

Dodging fireballs was the only hazard about Bowser back in 1987

The main task you have to fight against in the game aside from the platforming is the time limitation.  You have 400 seconds to finish each level.  That’s about 6 minutes, give or take.  Most of the levels can be passed easily within 2-3 minutes, but others that have puzzle elements can take longer.  Even though Virtual Console offers restore points, it’s best to watch your time, especially in the castles.

In all honesty, despite the fact that the game is almost 30 years old for us in the West, the gameplay still holds up fairly well.  The controls don’t feel too tight or restricting.  While some of the platforming sections can require very specific timing, compared to some other hard-as-nails NES games, Super Mario Bros was and still is very friendly to casual and hardcore gamers alike.

Everyone’s favorite in-game cheat of skipping worlds

Part of this is how much you can exploit the game’s secrets.  There are secret blocks and paths all over the game.  Some of these can give you extra points or lives, while others will allow you to skip large portions of the game.  World 1-2, for example, has a hidden room that lets you warp instantly to Worlds 2, 3, or 4.  By knowing where these are, you can effectively only visit 2 or 3 worlds by the time you finish the game, instead of all 8.

What I will say is that you shouldn’t expect a long trek.  There are 4 levels per world, meaning the game only has 32 levels to trek through, assuming you don’t use the warp zones.  Each level will take you an average of 2-3 minutes to complete, so we are only looking at 1-2 hours of game time.  This wasn’t uncommon back and then, and I can let that slide since the game only costs $4.99.

Controls

The controls aren’t hard, since the NES only had a few buttons on its controller.  When you play on the 3DS or 2DS, you can use the D-Pad or Circle Pad to be able to move around the stages.  Then we have the A button for jumping and the B or X button for running and launching fireballs.

The only other control you have to worry about is for switching controllers.  If you choose to do a 2-player game with a friend or would just rather play as Luigi, you can hold the L and R triggers to pull up the Controller Function of the Virtual Console screen.  Tapping Y here will switch controllers between 1 and 2.  You cannot control Luigi unless you do this.

Presentation

The Goomba with half a head was just the tip of the iceberg for these random graphical glitches

Visually, the game is just as smoothly pixel-like as it was back in 1987.  The emulation on Virtual Console does a good job of recreating this, but there are a couple mishaps to be talked about with the presentation in general.

The first issue is with the visuals.  In many areas, enemies will glitch and start to fade, disappear from view, and flicker back in.  This isn’t just a random occurrence either.  It is always the same enemies that do it at the same time.  I made a restore point before one of these occurrences and all 10 times I loaded it, the same enemies glitched in the same way.

The second issue is with the audio, though this could also be an issue with the original game.  The music distorts frequently when sound effects play in the game.  I’ve had many cases where I would be collecting coins and suddenly the sound would heavily distort and the music sounds like it’s having a hard time trying to play.

The rest of the presentation is fine.  There aren’t any other issues with how the game performs.  Just the two issues with the flickering enemies and the distorted background music.

Title: Adventures of Mana
Developer: Square Enix
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download:  512 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download | Retail
EU Availability: Digital Download | Retail
PSTV Support: Yes

The Mana series is something that a lot of RPG fans love, but more or less is an off-breed of Final Fantasy.  Mana has its own series and is a different kind of RPG than FF ever was.  From the get-go, Mana focused more on being an action RPG than a turn-based RPG, which FF didn’t deviate from until Final Fantasy XI released as an MMORPG.

The Mana games have actually gotten some new entries in recent years, though not many have actually come to the West.  One that did was Adventures of Mana, a remake of the Game Boy game, Final Fantasy Adventure.  When this came West, there was a stir in the PS Vita community.  Like Chaos Rings III, it released in the West on iOS and Android, and not the PS Vita.

Since then, thankfully, Square Enix has been good to bring the Vita version West as well and that’s what I’m going to review today.  Here is my official review of the Vita and PSTV version of Adventures of Mana!

Story

Little spelling errors like this are common throughout the game

Adventures of Mana takes place in a kingdom known as Glaive where the Mana Tree supports all life in the world.  Hidden away after a violent war for the Tree’s power, it is once again threatened by the “Dark Lord” of Glaive, wishing to harness it’s great power for his own personal use.  A slave forced to fight beasts known as Sumo, however, goes on a journey to protect the Mana Tree and effectively keep the Dark Lord from repeating the world’s past mistakes.

The setting is very in tune with Final Fantasy games, but the story doesn’t come without mishaps.  First of all is the translation of the game.  There are a lot of areas where there are misspelled words or completely wrong words in the middle of sentences.  We’re not talking like SAO: Hollow Fragment, but it’s pretty noticeable when you say “Study the Cant in my book” instead of “Study the Chant in my book”.  It happened pretty often, so I figured I would mention it.

The other factor is the showing that the game is very dated.  There are story scenes that push the story forward, telling you where to go next, but the pacing just goes so fast that it doesn’t take time for character development.  You meet someone that’s dying on the road and before knowing anything about them, they just auto-trust you and tell you where to go to save the world.  I get dying-breath, but it’s to a point where it feels way too fast.

Gameplay

It’s hard to believe this is the same giant cat that the original game started with

Adventures of Mana is a hack-n-slash Action RPG with puzzle elements thrown into the mix.  The better way to describe it would be to have you take Zelda games like Link to the Past or Oracle of Ages and add Final Fantasy elements to them, and you have what this game is.

You progress through the game by exploring a large overworld and getting from one place to the next.  The map is like a grid that you explore as you move around, much like older Zelda games.  For a more recent example, think about how the map forms in Hyrule Warriors’ Adventure Mode.  Every grid you visit is added to your map so the more you explore, the more you have to reference on your map when you have a new objective.

Figuring out where to go and how to get there, though, is a different story.  You’ll have NPCs telling you what direction to go for your next objective but it’s up to you to figure out where, exactly it is and normally involves you using a specific item or weapon to traverse areas like a puzzle to actually reach those areas.  Some might require you to just go a few grids to the right, while others may require you to move around for a bit to find a pole your chain flail weapon can grapple you to in order to pass a river that is blocking passage to the next town.

I have lots of Mattocks and Rings, and for good reason

The most important aspect of the game are items you use in dungeons.  You get items that help you navigate dungeons, like keys to open locked doors and Mattocks to break down walls and rocks.  However, you only get a certain number of uses, which means you need to have several of each of these in your inventory whenever you’re getting close to a dungeon.  If you don’t, it can be fatal to your progress of the game.

Here is why.  This is a 1:1 remake of the original game, meaning nothing was changed about the original.  Many dungeons will lock you inside and won’t unlock until you’ve beaten the dungeon and this can stab you in the back if you’re low on Mattocks or Keys.  You can buy these in the shops or get them as drops from specific enemies.  During my first save file, I got to a dungeon and ran out of Mattocks.  None of the enemies in the dungeon dropped it and I couldn’t leave.  I was 100% stuck and had to start a completely new file, losing 5 hours of progress.  You have to be careful, because every bad spot that can get you stuck forever is still here in the remake.

The strategic part of this is that your inventory isn’t infinite.  You can only hold about 15 different items at once.  This is counting Keys, Mattocks, Key Items, Potions and other healing items, curing items for various status ailments, etc.  So, you can’t just by 99 Keyrings and 99 Mattocks with all of your money.  You have to constantly watch your inventory between dungeons to know when to visit shops and when not to.

You get partners for dungeons and bosses, though most of the time, they’ll go down and it’ll just be you versus the boss

Actual combat in the game varies depending on your weapon.  You get lots of weapons from simple swords and axes to chain flails and spears.  Each weapon handles differently for different situations.  This is also critical for boss fights, as certain weapons are much better at fighting certain bosses than others.  A boss surrounded by magic orbs is best fought with the long-range chain flail than the short range axe.

This method of combat works but also has that “Zelda” feel to it.  You’re not going to be hacking all over the place like you would in, say, Star Ocean.  As I said at the start of this section, this game is like a classic Zelda with some Final Fantasy elements thrown into the mix.

With time in play, you can expect the game to last you at least 10-15 hours, but if it takes you some time to learn the system or you don’t use a walkthrough, the amount of time it’ll take to get lost and learn the system could make it last up to 20-25 hours or more.

Controls

Adventures of Mana is like a straight port from iOS/Android, but with button commands thrown in.  Mobile icons are still on the screen, but despite this, Square surprises gamers with the fact that this is 100% compatible with the PlayStation TV.

Moving around is done with the Left Analog Stick or D-Pad.  The L and R triggers are used for spell and item shortcuts.  Then you have the face button controls.  X is for attacking and Circle can use the currently-selected item or spell.  Triangle opens up the Map and Save menu and Square opens up the customization menu.

No real complaints about the control scheme, really.  Granted, nothing is explained to you in the game.  You just have to press buttons and learn as you go, but once you get that going, it’s not bad at all.

Presentation

Nothing is more fun than riding a chocobo to a sweet tune in a colorful world

Visually, the game got a massive overhaul compared to the original Game Boy release.  The Chibi-like 3D renders and environments look very colorful on the PS Vita and PSTV both.  It really helps bring the game to life, especially for those coming back to the game after having played the original on the Game Boy years ago.

There’s no real bad part of the presentation or performance.  Frame-rate is surprisingly good.  I don’t know exacts, but I can tell you that the game runs higher than 30 fps for the entire game.  I had a video project set for 30 fps for gameplay of this and I had to set it up to a max of 60 fps because the 30 fps video made the game look like it was lagging.  All around good job on the presentation and performance from Square Enix.

The only thing that’s different from the iOS/Android release is that the load times for changing rooms is slightly longer.  We’re talking maybe a single second longer.  Enough to be noticed, but not enough to be a problem.

Ever since the “New” models of the Nintendo 3DS came out with not only exclusive games but exclusive software features, owners of the older models were given a tough choice.  If they wished to play N3DS-exclusive games or use Amiibos in existing 3DS games that support them, they would have to upgrade to the new model.  It was that or to make do without those features and not being able to do everything in a game, right?

Wrong.  Nintendo is sympathetic towards the dislike of being forced to upgrade to a new model for new features.  While there isn’t anything to be done about exclusive games because of the better CPU of the new models, other features are available to the old models.  The C Stick camera functions in many games can be achieved by using the already-existing Circle Pad Pro accessory for 3DS and 3DS XL models.  That just leaves Amiibo support.

Thanks to a small peripheral that Nintendo made and sells for a pretty cheap price (I snatched one for $12.99), all old models, including the 2DS, can use Amiibo features in games and that peripheral is what I am about to talk about.  Here is my review of the NFC Reader/Writer, or as I like to call it, the Amiibo Reader.

Design

Two AA batteries, fully with Asian text with the Made-in-China device

The design of this reader is incredibly simple.  It is a small cylindrical object about as big around as a soda can and only about 3 or 4” tall.  This may sound derogatory towards the system, but the closest thing I could compare it to is a small, cylindrical paperweight.

The top of the device is smooth with just a single emblem on it for the 3DS screens.  Around the sides, you have the most important parts.  On the very front, you have a power button and two circle indents.  One of these is for the light to show when the device has power and when it is connecting to a 3DS or 2DS system.  The other larger circular indent is the actual feed where the wireless signal of the device is transmitted to connect to those devices.

The bottom is the last part of the reader, which houses a little bit of engraved information about the device, along with a click-to-open battery compartment.  Unlike what you may expect, Nintendo still makes technology that runs on good old-fashioned batteries.  This reader, for example, runs on 2 AA batteries, the same amount that was required by the Game Boy Color back when I was a small child.

The only other thing to say about the design is the weight.  Although this looks like a paperweight by design, it is much lighter.  I wouldn’t say it weighs more than 1 pound, maybe 2.

Performance

Amiibos sit and connect with ease when on the reader

So, how does this thing work?  Do you have to register it on the system?  Do you have to hold down the power button to register it like the PS Vita’s Disney Infinity base?  It’s all quite simple, in fact, and Nintendo has made it so simple that you hardly even need to read the included instructions to make it work.  It’s as simple as pressing a button, quite literally.

You make this work by getting to a game position that requires an Amiibo, like the amiibo feature in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy Plus or Super Smash Bros.  Then, you simple turn the reader on, set a figure on top of it, and it automatically connects to your system and does its thing.  It works as fluidly as it does on the New 3DS, when you put Amiibos on its touch screen.

However, I have one gripe to make about how this works.  The reader transmits its wireless signal via infrared, much like many TV Remote Controls do.  This means that the signal is transmitted along a straight line.  To get it to connect, you have to put it directly balanced and in front of your system’s infrared receiver.  Basically, you have to set the system down flat on a table in front of the reader for it to be able to connect, an inconvenience when on the go.

Straight-line infrared aren’t always a convenient thing

The device gets away with this because no game (that I am aware of) requires you to connect to an Amiibo for more than a few seconds.  Even the features in Super Smash Bros only require you to connect to the reader when you are saving changes to your amiibo character in the game.  I also tested this in Ace Combat and the Mario and Friends: Amiibo Challenge game, and you only ever need to use it for a couple seconds at a time.

Although this is a minor factor, I also went to test just how long the battery can last.  The system does have a feature where it will turn itself off if 5 minutes goes by without any activity.  Just in case you use it and forget to turn it off as you’re playing a game.  But, off of 2 batteries, this unit will last a grand total of – hours.

Title: God Eater Resurrection
Developer: Bandai Namco
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download:  3.0 GB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download (Available August 2016)
PSTV Support: Yes

God Eater is a franchise that started back in the PSP gen but has never ceased to fail to gather fan after fan in the handheld world.  From the original God Eater to God Eater 2 in Japan to the game we’re going to review today.  When you get into discussions about hunters, a lot of PSP and Vita fans will talk and say such great things about the God Eater franchise, along with distaste towards the misspelling of the first game in the West, called Gods Eater instead of God Eater.

The PS Vita has been quite fortunate with this franchise as it can play every God Eater game that’s been made.  From the PSP original and “Burst” release to God Eater 2, the “Rage Burst” expansion of GE2, and the remake of the first game, God Eater fans have a lot to love on Sony’s handheld console.

The remake is what we are going to talk about today.  Not long ago, the most recent game in the series, “Resurrection”, released on the Vita and PS4 in the west.  A remake of the original game, here is my review of God Eater: Resurrection!

Story

The sad case for most plots of hunters

Since this is a remake of the first game, it follows the same story.  The Earth has become a warzone.  Some time before the beginning of the game, strange biological creatures called Arigami evolved and appeared, attacking humanity.  What resulted was in humankind’s near-extinction, with the remaining population living in protected walls made by the Fenrir Military unit.  Think of it like Attack on Titan’s plot idea, but with far less human population remaining.

In the time since their appearance, humans have developed weapons that use the same kind of cells that make up Arigami that bond with their users, known as “God Arcs”.  People compatible with these are known as “God Eaters” and are sent on missions to take down Arigami to collect resources and protect citizens as a project is underway to build a stronger fortifying position to protect against them.

This is a remake of God Eater Burst, which was an expanded release of God Eater.  As such, all of the bonus story areas from Burst are here, and Resurrection has even further story expansion in order to bridge the events of God Eater and God Eater 2.

The story, itself, says pretty interesting throughout and comes by on occasion.  The story isn’t nonexistent like in Ragnarok Odyssey but not as heavy like in Freedom Wars.  I call it a happy medium to let you focus on missions and get a good amount of story.

Gameplay

One of the few hunting games with proper jumping and aerial combat

Just like the original, God Eater Resurrection is a 3D Hunting RPG with mild shooting elements thrown into the mix.  You’ll be spending your missions running around 3D environments and using various weapons to attack enemies in groups.  If you’re familiar with the original, you’ll know what’s up here as well.

Since this is a remake, the first order of business is to go over what’s different between Burst and Resurrection.  The base game is the same, but the gameplay has been enhanced.  New weapon types from God Eater 2 have been included as well as new attacks for bosses, influenced by their behavior in the second game.  There have also been Predator Styles for devouring (which I will detail later) and a lot of balancing that changes the difficulty of the game.  All of these are relatively minor, though.  All in all, it’s basically an HD remake with gameplay enhancements from its sequel.

Like most Hunters, you create a custom character when you start the game.  After, you’re introduced to your base of operations where you can customize your character, upgrade and buy equipment, talk to characters and start story events, buy items from shops, and go on missions.  You will mostly just use the terminal for equipment and front desk for missions, though.

There’s not a giant number of options, but plenty to choose from

As above, the terminal is used for customization, which is beyond just making equipment.  It can do much more than that.  First of all, you can use materials you’ve gathered from missions to upgrade your equipment to increase its stats or turn it into a completely new weapon.  You can also craft new equipment from weapons to shields to new outfits and even stat changes you can equip your character with.  Later on, you also are able to equip your weapons with special skills.

You can also customize NPCs here.  On each mission, you can take AI characters with you to assist in combat, and they all have special abilities.  Beyond what they come with, you can create and add extra abilities, like giving their attacks special effects like poison or paralyze, or the ability to power up other characters around them when their health gets low.

There’s a lot to swallow in the form of customization, but it is all introduced to you in a very balanced and slow pace, offering tutorial hints as well as time for you to get used to each feature before introducing the next.

When you’re out on missions, we see the first unique aspect of God Eater.  In combat, you will have 2 different weapons that your weapon can transform into.  You can use a melee weapon and a firearm.  You also have several different types like short swords for quick attacks and buster swords for slow, powerful attacks and guns ranging from close-range Shot-gun weapons to long-range Sniper weapons.  Remember switching between swords and guns in Freedom Wars?  God Eater is likely where the Freedom Wars developers got that idea.

Predator Styles are truly a god-send for fighting quicker bosses

The second unique aspect is Devouring enemies.  A God Arc is like a living weapon that can eat at enemies, offering you materials from killed enemies or the ability to steal abilities from enemies still alive, letting you use your guns to fire off their special attacks right back at them.  Resurrection introduces Predator Styles that allow for more acrobatic and quicker devouring that make battles a bit more manageable.

Past this is using bullet types in combat.  God Eater has a large focus on elemental weaknesses, so you’ll have to switch what types of bullets you use depending on what enemy you’re fighting or even what part of a boss you’re currently targeting.  You don’t have to, but it could be the difference between a normal Sniper Bullet doing 80 damage per shot and a Freeze Sniper Bullet doing 300 damage per shot.

As you’d expect, this promotes strategy in combat.  This is in combination with body parts and Oracle Points for your guns.  Most Hunting games have a focus on attacking body parts.  Toukiden takes this to the point of actually destroying limbs.  God Eater implements this into armor.  Every boss has weak spots where you can do normal and critical damage.  Then you have the fact that firearms now use a large about of OP (Oracle Points) when fired.  This means that once you run out, your firearm becomes useless until you attack them with melee weapons to build it back up.

Those few missions where the game forces you to have a small party, and still winning

This is a lot to read and swallow, but it works pretty well together.  However, the balancing done to Resurrection does cause for some concern to non-hardcore Hunting fans.  Firearm bullets now take a significant amount of OP, which makes the strategy bigger, but also makes a lot of boss fights last a lot longer.  I’ve had save files for both Resurrection and Burst at similar areas and sniper bullets in Burst barely lower the OP gauge, while in Resurrection, the same bullets lower it by almost 30%.

I’m all for difficulty in games, but this makes the battles a lot longer and more tedious.  Missions go from spending 4-5 minutes on a boss to spending 15-20 minutes on a boss, depending on your level of skill.  The game is still undoubtedly fun for a Hunting RPG, but when you start fighting several bosses in a mission that all take forever to down, it starts to feel a little tedious.

With length, we’re still looking at 30-40 hours, like Burst.  You could arguably add a lot more to it due to the balancing I mentioned above along with all the new story they added to help bridge the plots of God Eater and God Eater 2.  Still, it’s going to be a nice time-sink, especially for $19.99.

Controls

Bandai Namco deserves huge props for the control scheme of Resurrection, most notably how it works on the PSTV.  First of all, L3 and R3 have special functions on the PSTV, but they even went as far as to accommodate for the Dual Shock 4’s touch pad.  There are special features for the map that can be done with the DS4 touchpad completely outside of the actual touch controls you can enable for the game.

Now, aside from this, you move with the Left Analog Stick and can move the camera with the D-Pad and Right Analog Stick.  The L trigger is used to center the camera and the R trigger is used for dashing and switching weapon types in the field.  X is used for jumping and Circle for interacting with items.  Square is used for attacking normally, and Triangle is used for powerful attacks.  Finally, you can use the Select button to pull up the item and command menu and Start for the map menu.

As fluent as the controls are, the R trigger in the default control scheme gets on my nerves.  Tapping R changes weapons, so if you just let go for a second before holding to run, your character changes their weapon in mid-run and you go into combat, expecting to slash with a sword and end up stalling from a gun out of ammunition.

Presentation

Such a tense scene.  I couldn’t keep it from popping up in this review

The visuals were one of the most noticeable things that got upgraded.  Even for the PSP, God Eater Burst looked really grainy and had a ton of jagged edges that shouldn’t have been there.  Resurrection is much more polished and looks that much smoother whether you’re playing on the Vita or the big screen with the PSTV.

Load Times are much improved but there is the occasional frame drop that can plague the larger bosses and groups of bosses.  When you’re in combat and a particularly huge boss corners your group in a small area, the game will have some frame drops when all characters are in the middle of attacking.  This is more prominent when you have multiple large bosses on you at once (which happens a lot more than you would hope.  The bosses love to gang-bang you, in a very painful way).

Title: Mini Mario and Friends – Amiibo Challenge
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Type: 3DS
NA Availability: Digital
EU Availability: Digital
Block Usage:  2,336

Amiibos from Nintendo are often looked at and compared with the kind of character figures that are sent out for games like Disney Infinity and Lego Dimensions.  The same principle is in effect there.  Disney Infinity character figures unlock content for Disney Infinity while Amiibos help to unlock features of various Nintendo games.  It’s not exactly the same, as not having Amiibos doesn’t keep you from having story content, but having them adds something extra.

With this in mind, you can’t help but wonder if Nintendo will go that route and make a game that has content locked without specific Amiibos.  A lot of people likely think that they won’t ever do this, but I’ve learned this week that they have.  It is a free-to-play game, in fact, that has content locked unless you have certain kinds of Amiibos to play the game with.

Straight from the free-to-play section of the eShop, here is my review of Mini Mario and Friends: Amiibo Challenge!

Story

Due to this game not having any story, this section shall remain blank.

Gameplay

The World Map is very colorful and character-oriented

Amiibo Challenge is what I would call a strategy platformer-puzzler.  Basically, the base game is a platformer but your character moves automatically.  Strategy is thrown in as you have to create platforms to lead them down the correct path and that also gives it a big puzzle feel.  So, as I said, strategy platformer-puzzler.  I know it sounds weird.  Just go with it.

The main progression mirrors normal Mario games.  You have various worlds, each littered with stages.  Beat all of the stages in one world and you unlock the next.  The bigger unique aspect is that there are character-specific worlds with stages geared towards specific Mario characters from Mario and Luigi to Peach and Rosalina.

When you first start the game, you have to scan an Amiibo.  Although the game encourages you to use characters from the Mario series, any Amiibo can be scanned.  If you scan someone not from the Mario series, though, you play as a default character instead of someone specific.  I spent most of my time with the game playing as Princess Zelda.

That NFC Reader I just reviewed is required if you don’t have a “New” 3DS

In each stage, your character will be moving on their own, climbing platforms and encountering anything directly in front of them.  It is your job to collect resources around the map and create a path for them to follow that will result in them reaching the door that leads to the next stage.

Resources can vary, from Warp Pipes to teleport characters across the stage, bridges for them to cross or slide down, and even pads that will launch them into the air.  You will be using a combination of all of these to traverse each stage and each element will be introduced a good amount of time before the next to help you learn the system.

The biggest trick here is timing.  You may only have a split second before your character goes through a pipe and across the ledge before you have to create another ledge and pipe for them to go through to avoid falling to a spike pit.  The nice thing is that your character stands still at the start of the stage, so you can mentally look around the map and create your plan before tapping them to have them start moving.

The biggest two aspects are character-specific doors and worlds.  Along with the normal doors used to exit stages, you will see doors with character icons on them.  Only certain characters can enter these doors, as they lead to their own specific world that no one else can visit.  In order to enter the Rosalina doors, you must be playing as Rosalina since only her special ability allows you to move up there.

This is a pretty simple puzzle when compared to others

Here’s where things get restrictive.  Obviously, you can only play in the Mario World with a Mario Amiibo, so if you don’t own one, you can’t go in.  If you don’t own any Mario-based Amiibo figures, you can’t go into any of those worlds.  This poses a problem as at first, I would just think that I’ll just pass on those worlds and go through the main path of worlds instead.

The game puts an end to that logic quick and fast.  The 2^nd “main” world is called Star World, and every stage in Star World requires Amiibo Tokens to unlock.  These are only available from character-specific worlds.  There’s no other way to get them, so unless you have or go out and buy some Mario-based Amiibos, you can’t access even the 2^nd stage of World 2.  And if you want to play all of this game, you’ll be expected to have Amiibos for all major Mario characters from Mario, Luigi, Toad, Bowser Jr, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Rosalina, Toad, and others.

This is a different method for in-game purchases.  Instead of charging DLC money to unlock content, it’s locked behind Amiibo figures, in a similar manner to the business model of Disney Infinity and Skylanders.  Buy Mario-based Amiibos or you can’t play through most of the game.  In fact, if you don’t have any, you can only play about 15 minutes’ worth of the game.

Past this is the fact that each character world is only a few stages long.  That’s barely long enough to introduce each world’s focus on a character gimmick.  Once you learn how someone works, you’re done with them and onto the next.

Speaking of length, let’s assume you have all Mario Amiibo figures.  You can unlock every world in the game.  There are a little over 60 stages total, and each stage takes an average of 1-2 minutes.  Regardless, the best you’re getting out of this is around 1-2 hours.  That’s for collectors.  The rest of us would be lucky to get 30 minutes out of it.  It’s short.

Controls

Most of the controls deal with the touch screen.  All puzzle elements require you to tap areas on the screen to remove elements or add them in.  This works surprisingly well and, while the game isn’t without physical controls, touch takes the lead here.

During stages, you can use the D-Pad to move the camera around to look at the stage.  You can also use the Circle Pad and face buttons for this.  To be honest, that’s all there is to the physical controls.  There are three different ways to move the camera and that’s all there is to it.  On the Map screen, though, you can use the D-Pad to move from stage to stage and the A and B buttons to select and cancel out of options.

Presentation

Rosalina’s Lunar Jump is her specialty that only she can perform

Visually, it looks cute.  All of the characters that have been reincarnated as small wind-up toys look adorable and there’s just enough detail to make them look colorful and alive.  I saw no blemishes or particularly-strong pixilation being done while playing the game.

Performance is the same.  Load times are short.  Frame drops never happen.  It’s optimized well enough, and the Amiibo figures will register and scan without a hitch.

App Title: Twitch
App Type: PlayStation Vita
File Size: 51 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Twitch is something that a lot of people use.  I use it every once in a while when I want to stream a game I’m playing on the PlayStation TV or PS4 (with a personal account).  It opens a lot of doors, regarding getting content out to people, or just doing it while you casually play games.  Some stream it and do video and audio during their playing, while others just show the game to show the game.

For non-broadcasters, though, watching streams is a big thing, and what better way to do that than through a dedicated Twitch App?  No problems dealing with the website.  Just boot up your app and go at it.  That’s what PS Vita and PSTV gamers were promised a long time ago from Twitch, themselves.  They had announced an official Twitch app for handheld gamers.

When the app finally released a couple weeks ago, I saw a lot of people thrilled for it to be there, but some who were saying how bad the app’s quality was.  So, I dove into it myself this week to find out.  Here is my review of the Twitch app!

Design

Just like the PS4 app, but with a little more lag

If you’ve used Twitch on PS4, you know exactly what you’re in for.  The PS Vita’s app has an interface that looks just like the PS4 app’s interface.  You boot the app to the main menu and you’ve got a side-bar menu on the left, separating categories, your profile if you’re logged in, and channels you follow.

Then, the rest of it to the right are squares separated into categories, from games to recommendations, showing you a lot of content you can easily select to go into and play.  The final part is the Options menu which is triggered by tapping the Start Button.  This pulls a menu from the right side so you can see Help Topics or Log Out of your profile.

This works pretty well, since it is organized in an efficient manner that is easy to cycle through and read.  There’s also props to give regarding this because the main highlighted feed actually streams and plays live from the main menu of the app.  That’s something I’ve never seen done in a PS Vita app before.

The interface while playing a video is simple as well.  It automatically loads the stream without the interface to avoid buttons blocking your view and a simple tap of a button or the touchscreen to pull up the few options here.  This is mostly just the slider for video progress and an option to be able to favorite the video/stream you’re watching.

Performance

Note: Screenshots cannot be taken in-app.  These were made via Capture Card

This is where I could see why some people were complaining about the app’s quality.  So, let’s begin with the menu exploration.  Like many PS Vita apps, the menu is very buggy and laggy.  I’ve had a considerable struggle in the menus on the PSTV, but on both systems, there’s a good bit of input lag when you’re moving through the menus and selecting a stream.  It wouldn’t be a lie to say I’ve had over a dozen situations in the past couple days where I would hit a button twice because the lag was so heavy it seemed like the app didn’t take my command.

Issue number 2 is video quality, itself.  When you load streams, you’ll see a lot of pixilation.  To be sure it wasn’t just the video, I pulled up my own channel and my own streams and watched them side by side on the Vita and my Surface Pro 2.  Sometimes the different isn’t huge, but it’s noticeable that you’re not getting very good video quality from the Vita app.

The final thing is crashing errors.  If you recall, I mentioned some crashing errors in my review of the 3DS YouTube app.  A similar situation happens in the Twitch Vita app.  There will be many cases where I will just be pausing a video and when I go to resume, the app gives me an error and forces me to restart it.  Not exactly the most convenient thing while watching a video and having to pause because of something happening in the real world.

Title: Pokemon Heart Gold / Soul Silver
Developer: Game Freak, Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Type: Nintendo DS

The Pokemon franchise is huge and has gotten into the idea of remaking their older games, ever since the Game Boy Advance generation.  When Game Freak and Nintendo remade the original Pokemon games in the form of Fire Red and Leaf Green, I was beyond excited.  I still remember going to a local store and seeing them both in a case, loving the art of Charizard they’d put on the box.  Re-discovering Gen 1 with Gen 3’s enhancements and graphics was a great trip.

Now, these things are more or less a normal thing.  One of the first 3DS reviews I did was for the Generation 3 remakes, Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby.  People are already starting to guess when the remakes of Diamond and Pearl are going to start development.  It’s just been that much of a pattern.

Before we can think ahead, though, we need to take a look back.  The Generation 1 remakes came out on the Game Boy Advance, and the Generation 3 remakes came out on the 3DS and 2DS.  So, that just leaves the original DS for the other remakes and something I’ve been seeking for months to do a review on.  Now that we’re here, let’s take a look.  Here is my retro review of the Generation 2 remakes, Pokemon: Heart Gold and Pokemon: Soul Silver!

Story

What they are so freaked out about?  It’s a secret

Unlike the Generation 1 remakes, Soul Silver and Heart Gold strictly follow the story of the original Silver And Gold games.  While there are many events that have been added for game-specific features, there is no extended storyline like there was with the extra islands in Fire Red and Leaf Green.

Knowing this, we follow a trainer who lives in the Johto region, beginning a quest to capture Pokemon and eventually take on the Elite Four to put their name in history.  On the way, he has major dealings with the revival of Team Rocket, whom had disbanded after the events of Generation 1, but are attempting to come back and search for their missing leader.

As I said above, some events were added for game features.  Pokemon following you is brought back from Pokemon Yellow, and some of the beginning story events were changed to make sense out of this feature, rather than relying on the anime’s Pikachu’s refusal to be inside a Pokeball.

The lack of new story may put some people off, but there is a ton of content to do, regardless.  Veterans are well aware that Generation 2 is large enough that you do all of the content in the Johto region and are given the opportunity to continue further by re-exploring the entirety of the Kanto region that you explore in Red, Blue, and Yellow, as well as challenging all of Kanto’s Gym Leaders and a fateful encounter with the Main Character from those games, Red.

Considering how much content was already there, the lack of new expansion can be forgiven.

Gameplay

Any Pokemon following you is something they seriously need to bring back in Sun and Moon

Like all Pokemon games, Heart Gold and Soul Silver are turn-based RPGs set around exploring a large world, catching and taming Pokemon to fight through trainers and gym leaders.  This is how things were during the original games and it still is like that in the new games.  It’s what Pokemon has always been about.

Since this is a remake, there are a lot of gameplay changes.  We have a lot of new features that were added in Generations 3 and 4, from Pokeball creation to double battles of 2 pokemon vs 2 opposing pokemon.  Like any fan would expect, Soul Silver is like taking the original Silver and Gold and applying all of the enhancements from the previous generation to it.  As such, Heart Gold and Soul Silver play just like Diamond and Pearl.

Some things have changed, though.  Story progression requirements are different.  Many things that were completely optional in the original games you have to do for story purposes, such as getting the Radio Card in one city and even seeing and facing the two Legendary Birds, Ho-Oh and Lugia.  It gives players more to do and adds a bit to the plot in a similar way that Generation 3 did with the storyline between Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza.

The most noticeable and cutest enhancement is the fact that Pokemon can follow you, like Pikachu did in Pokemon: Yellow Version on the Game Boy/Game Boy Color.  Although the story scene specifically sets this around your Starter Pokemon, you can have any Pokemon follow you and their unique sprite will be walking or flying behind you for whoever is in the first slot.  Any of the 493 Pokemon available can do this, from small Pokemon like Pidgey and Marrill to larger Pokemon like Zapdos and Lugia.

The Great Battle of Gen 2, remade

All in all, though, the same journey happens.  You still travel through Johto to challenge the Gym Leaders and Elite Four, but it’s enough that it really does feel like a new adventure.  The fact that you can capture more than Kanto and Johto Pokemon enhances this, as does the ability to catch the four primary Legendary Pokemon from Kanto when you visit that region(Articuno, Moltres, Zapdos, and Mewtwo).

Heart Gold and Soul Silver also sported online multiplayer, though that is all but useless now.  When I tried with various hotspots, it wouldn’t even register as a usable hotspot.  Play the game and enjoy single player (or do the hassle of tossing Pokemon between versions to eventually get them onto X and Y and the Pokemon Bank), but don’t expect online multiplayer to happen.

There is only one feature that really bugged me.  With your gear, you got the ability to re-challenge trainers and had them calling you with updates on their journey.  This is a great way to help you train for the Pokemon League, but the calling feature is over-used.  It got to the point where almost every battle I had ended in a call on my Gear that was a copy-paste job of something the same trainer had sent me several times even that very same day.  It happened so often that I started completely ignoring it, not realizing that some calls were important for the story.

With length, you’re in for a long trek.  On average, I’d put this game at least as a 40 hour adventure, if not more.  As with all Pokemon games, you’re going to be spending a long time in your initial trek, and that extra trek through Kanto adds a lot more hours to the journey.

Controls

The game’s controls are pretty easy, and also had a big focus on touch controls.  While everything can be done with physical controls, all of the menu options are on the touch screen.  This was to encourage players to use the stylus pen for menu options as well as registered heavy-use items, like the bicycle or running shoes.

Aside from touch controls, you can use the D-Pad or Circle Pad to move around and the L/R triggers to cycle sections when looking at menus.  With the face buttons, you can use the A button to select options or interact and the B button to cancel options.  X is used for pulling up the menu and Y is used for registered items.

It’s a pretty simple way of doing things and offers versatility in the form of using touch for menus and battles or traditional button controls.

Presentation

Like the GBA games but on the DS

Visually, don’t expect to see anything here you didn’t see in Diamond and Pearl.  The visuals of the game (outside of the 3D intro) basically look like the Gen 3 GBA games, but with more in-depth and 3D-ish battle animations.  This worked well for Diamond and Pearl and it does help the retro feel.  However, the renders lack polish.  Even on the 2DS, there are jagged edges and blemishes all over the place on the battle renders.  It just looks unpolished and more like a GBA game than a DS game.

Performance has no issues, though.  Unlike the 3D Pokemon games on the 3DS, we don’t have any frame drops to worry about.  Everything in that regard functions very well in the Generation 2 remakes.