Title: 10 Second Ninja X
Developer: Game Maker Studio, Curve Digital
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download:  210 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

There are lots of games out there that try to mimic other games.  In fact, this is sometimes called a “genre” where a lot of games are similar.  You also have other games that many people refer to as “rip-offs”.  Take Blue Beacon for example.  I reviewed that for PS Mobile and it played and looked just like a retro Mario game.  It is what you’d call a “rip-off”.

Other games have similar elements to some franchises and not others.  A game’s story might look like a huge homage to a popular series, but the rest of the game may be completely different.  That’s what I have for you today.  This game’s story will heavily remind you of a particularly popular platformer series.  But the rest of the game will be something you’d not expect at all.

So, here is my review of 10 Second Ninja X!

Story

Looks like Sonic and Eggman, right?  

The plot revolves around a pirate and a ninja. The Blue Ninja lives in the forest as the Guardian of it and all of the animals inside.  One day, in an attempt to derail the Ninja’s reputation as being the fastest person in the world, a pirate kidnaps all of the animals and traps them inside robots.  Once the ninja is brought aboard the pirate’s ship, he is tasked with fighting the robots to free his friends while put in challenges to test his speedy resolve.

In many ways, I’m reminded of Sonic the Hedgehog from this game’s story.  Robots with captured animals.  A blue main character, and the fact that the pirate has a hover chair that looks just like the one used by Dr. Eggman in the Sonic series.  There is heavy Sonic inspiration all throughout the storyline of the game.

Another nice thing is that the story in this little indie game keeps going.  Instead of just providing you with a scenario and throwing gameplay at you, you get to see the story progress after each set of levels and see how things change for you, the pirate, and the others aboard the ship.

Gameplay

Ninja vs Robots, and avoid those instant-death electric traps

10 Second Ninja X is what you could call an expansion or remake of the original 10 Second Ninja game.  It is a 2D platformer with puzzle elements thrown into the mix.  Overall, you’ll be platforming and fighting enemies in small side-scrolling levels with puzzle elements as well as time management elements.

The main difference between this and the original game is that it is a much larger game.  The “X” version has 60 levels to its main storyline that were not in the original game.  Then, the entire sets of levels from the original unlock and are able to be played.  In short terms, there’s more than twice the amount of content in this version of the game.

Progression will basically go from doing a set of levels and then exploring the ship, do the next set of levels, explore the ship, and you keep repeating this process until you reach the end of the game.  It’s a pretty simple premise and definitely not the first game on the Vita that has done something like this.

Unlocking new worlds requires you do collect Star Ranks from previous ones.  Each world has 10 levels, and the better you do, the better your rank, from 1-3.  Once you achieve 20 ranks, the next world opens and you repeat this process for the rest of the game.

Exploring the ship is quite the fun little side task

Ship progression is what makes this game stand out so much.  After each world, you get to explore the ship, talk to NPCs, play mini-games to get tokens so the game will give you hints on levels you get stuck on, and collect hidden items that unlock rewards.  There’s more to the game than just constantly doing level after level after level.  This ship progression really helps balance things out so it never gets old or repetitive during the journey.

How you do these levels is where the game’s title comes in.  Each stage has you placed in a 2D arena with enemies.  You then have 10 seconds to navigate the level and defeat all enemies by going up to slash them, throw shurikens at them and later one, start using obstacles to ricochet shurikens around and do maneuvers to defeat far-away enemies with ease.  The faster you do it, the better your rank.  Since you pretty much need a 2-star rank in every level to unlock the next world, it’s best to look around the stage before you start so you have a plan in order to do this.

The idea of only having 10 seconds to complete a stage sounds pretty intense, and it can be.  To be able to get 2-3 stars, you have to be light-ning fast in your platforming and attacking.  Even 1/10^th of a second could be the difference between getting 1 star or 2.  The game even has a trophy for missing a rank by 0.03 seconds.  Strategy and reflexes are key here.

Challenged yet?  Try flipping switching and taking all of them out in less than 10 seconds

This is where difficulty comes in.  This game is advertised as a hard-as-nails platformer that will have you raging and tossing your controller (or in this case, PS Vita) across the room in absolute fury.  I’m not sure I really agree with that.  Doing World 1 will be a challenge as you’re learning the ropes of the game so you’ll probably have to repeat stages there a lot as you learn.  Once you do that, it shouldn’t be all that hard.  Past World 2, there weren’t many stages I had to repeat in order to get a Rank 2 score.  Now, if you want to do Rank 3 for everything, that’s a different story.

The game flows well and, honestly, I quickly got addicted to how handy and pick-up-and-play the game was.  With each stage only lasting 10 seconds, it easily came into “Well, just one more stage” territory.  However, there are two things that had issues.  First is Benji, your temporary companion on the ship.  Second is network notifications.

Benji follows you around and talks to you, which is all fine.  Except every time he talks, the game forces you to stand still while he is talking.  In the middle of jumping when he talks?  Your jump ends in mid-air and you fall to the ground.  There’s no way to turn this off outside of going into a stage and attacking him to knock him out.  It drove me nuts every time he jumped around me when I was trying to search for collectibles, especially since he talks every 2-3 seconds.

These pop-ups every time you go to select a stage is very irritating

Network notifications is the other thing that caused annoyances.  The game constantly checks the online leaderboards when you’re at the stage select area.  This is convenient when you want to see who has the top scores for stages.  However, it also causes a lot of network pop-ups.  If your net connection is low, or if you’re not at home and connected to Wi-Fi, every single trip into that room will leads to a “You are not connected to the Internet” pop-up that forces you to stop what you’re doing and dismiss it.  The PS4 version does this too, but it is just a notification that doesn’t actually stop the game.  Much less convenient and more of an issue on the PS Vita.

Now, how long is this game?  Given that each level is only 10 seconds long and there’s a little over 100 levels, you could potentially beat the game’s levels in 16 minutes plus about the same in exploration, plus more for cutscenes.  However, given the idea of looking and planning before stages begin and re-doing stages when you fail, I would give each stage more like a minute or so.  If I were to guess an exact time frame for beating the game, it’d probably be around 3-4 hours.  Not bad for a game that only costs $5.99 (Week 1 Sale Price).

Controls

Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about touch controls.  The game is fully compatible with the PlayStation TV, but even on the Vita, touch controls never show up, allowing your quick movements to be localized to the physical button controls.

Movement is done with the D-Pad or Left Analog Stick.  The Right Stick is used for camera movement at the beginning of each stage.  X is used for jumping, Square for sword attacks, and Circle for throwing Shurikens.  Triangle doesn’t do anything.  Finally, the L and R triggers are used for restarting your stage and Start will take you back to the Stage Select on the ship.

Things are explained pretty well, as there are tutorial stages as the story begins.  You shouldn’t have any problems figuring out what things do.

Presentation

The screen isn’t always blue-tinted.  That’s just the laser effect

Visually, the game looks nice and crisp.  In all honesty, it doesn’t look different between the Vita version on the PSTV and the PS4 version.  Both versions look colorful and really well optimized.

The major difference between them is load times.  On the PS4, transitioning into stages and going back to the ship will take little more than 1-2 seconds.  On the Vita, it’s more like 5 seconds.  Nothing to fret over, but just a noticeable difference in loading sequences.

Today, Nintendo’s handhelds are known for having 2 separate screens on them. There is the top screen, mostly used for the display, and the touch screen, used for interaction and sometimes resource and reference sections for games. This is the typical aspect of today’s handhelds from Nintendo and what a lot will expect to see in whatever handheld Nintendo comes out with next, be it a 3DS successor or a partner unit with the NX.

This format did not start in this generation, though and nor did the clamshell hardware design. The two screens actually hit the gaming world one generation back, in direct competition with the PlayStation Portable. That’s what I’m going to talk about today. The system that not only brought forth the 2-screen design, but also the touch screen, stylus pens, and handheld debut of Super Mario 64!

Here is my retro hardware review of the Nintendo Dual Screen, otherwise known as the Nintendo DS!

Design

I won’t lie.  The GBA slot was probably the feature of the DS I used the most

The Nintendo DS is roughly in the same format and design the Nintendo 3DS is. It was made to use the clamshell format that the Game Boy Advance SP started as a means of not only making the system smaller for travel but also to help protect the screens from damage inside a bag or pocket (or being dropped).

From the outside, we don’t see a lot of interface buttons. However, looking on the top and bottom of the unit, we do see it. On the top of the device, we have the L and R triggers, a port for the charging cable (the same one used in the GBA SP), stylus pen compartment, and a cartridge slot. This slot is used for Nintendo DS cartridges. On the bottom, however, we have another cartridge slot. This was not on all DS models, and was used to play Game Boy Advance cartridges. Just like the 3DS is compatible with DS carts, the DS was compatible with GBA carts. Also on the bottom is the volume slider and the audio jack.

There’s a lot more to see once you open the system The actual piece that moves up and down on the hinge is what holds the main display as well as two speakers that allow for stereo sound without headphones.

On the bottom and much larger piece, you have most of the buttons as well as the system’s microphone, power lights, and the smaller screen used as the touch screen. To the left of this screen are the Power button and D-Pad. To the right are the Start, Select, and ABXY face buttons. This is similar to the 3DS, but with a few buttons missing and the Start/Select buttons in a different place.

That’s about all there is to say about the hardware design. When the system is booted, it has a very simple Operating System, offering areas for started the DS or GBA games in the slots, going into Pictochat, an ad hoc messaging system settings, and Download Play, enabling two people to play a game together when only one of them owned the cartridge for it.

All of that is displayed on the bottom screen. On the top screen at the home area shows a clock, calendar, and battery information. And that wraps up the design of the system features. When you actually want to run games, it’s a little different than the 3DS. Since the DS has no “Home” button, if you want to stop playing a game, you have to actually hold the Power button and cut off the power to the entire device, turn it back on, and then go into something else.

Performance

It looks bad, but the unit still works

So, how did the Nintendo DS perform? The clamshell design worked well enough for being Nintendo’s first attempt at it, and the fact that there was stereo audio through speakers was a really nice improvement over past handhelds. Not to say it didn’t have issues, though, as you’ll see in the video review of my Nintendo DS.

The main problem is how the hinge is set up. The piece with the top screen is smaller than the bottom piece, so with the hinge, it’s just lying and sitting on top of the larger piece. Because of this hardware design, it was a bit flimsy. There are a lot of cases where the hinge broke and part of the screen was loose. My NDS is like that, too. It happened not long after I got the system and is still like that today. Granted, the device still functions, but it is a pretty big design flaw that was rectified with later models of the DS.

The next thing to talk about is the screen quality. While the battery life of the DS was considerably long on a single charge, the screen quality paled in comparison to its competitor. In all honesty, the screen quality looks about like the screen quality of the Game Gear. There are a lot of pixels you can see or what looks like pixels. You can see clear degredation on the screen and, while this is the same unit I bought near-launch back in 2004, it had that problem back then as well.

Screen quality is all degraded, but I still love Super Mario 64 DS for Yoshi playability

Playing games works well enough, though one nit-pick is the lack of optimization of the card-reading capabilities of the system. In the Design section, I talked about how you have to turn the device off to stop playing a game and play another. You have to do the same thing when you put a different cartridge in. The system doesn’t auto-read and pull up another cart if it’s still on and you take one out and put one in. You have to actually turn the device off and back on before you can play the new game.

As far as actually playing games, listening to audio and such, things run nice and smooth. There are much shorter loading sequences between hitting Start Game and the game starting. It actually starts games a lot faster than the 3DS starts DS games. So there’s props to the original hardware for being able to do that, and a question as to why the 3DS can’t load games as quickly.

Title: Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops Plus
Developer: Kojima Productions
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: PSP
Download: 639 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: No

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. I reviewed that not long ago. It was the first full-on console style Metal Gear game in the handheld world. Portable Ops opened a lot of doors, offering MGS3 gameplay on the PSP. It also introduced the artistic cut scene style later used in Peace Walker, said to be one of the better games of the series.

Another thing Portable Ops did was enough to success to warrant a standalone expansion pack that offered more in-depth gameplay as well as more in-depth multiplayer options. Along with Metal Gear Online with MGS4, handheld fans had a way for doing Metal Gear online multiplayer as well as key story characters in playable form, like Old Snake from MGS4.

To complete the Metal Gear retro reviews, I am back with a new review. Here is my coverage for the PSP expansion, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus!

Story

Due to this game having no story, this section shall remain blank.

Gameplay

Same ops style, but more Old Snake

Portable Ops Plus plays much like what it is an expansion of. During missions, you will be sneaking past enemies, fighting enemies, and moving around environments. It is a 3D action-stealth game with TPS and FPS elements thrown in as well as unit management.

While Portable Ops had a Story Mode to drive you through it, Plus focuses more on gameplay and multiplayer. It has multiplayer missions, and the story campaign is replaced by the Infinite Mission mode, which is the biggest single player experience in the game.

When you first start the game, though, you can import all of your data from Portable Ops, and you can still use this feature on the PS Vita. All of your recruits and soldiers from the original game can be imported and used, including the special story recruits like Para-Medic, Major Zero, and Ocelot. The only thing is that the special characters cannot be upgraded like others can, which I’ll mention in a moment.

Different costumes and other customization options for multiplayer

Infinite Mission is basically as it sounds. You go through a gauntlet of missions with your chosen party of recruits with various objectives, like reaching target points, capturing enemies, or duking it out with a group of enemies. There are three difficulties that offer different lengths, all leading up to the last that is literally infinite missions until you eventually fail.

The idea of these mission gauntlets is the idea of starting from scratch. When you go in, you have no items and must find everything you need, from weapons to fight enemies to rations to recover your ever-depleting Stamina. That’s another thing. You can’t set this to Easy Mode. So, you always have rapid-depleting Stamina.

Upon using recruits in and completing these missions, you will not only unlock new characters to use (Story-specific for difficulties like Raiden from MGS2 and Old Snake from MGS4 as well as recruits based off of all the different enemy types from MGS1 and MGS2) but you will enhance and upgrade your used recruits. Story-based characters are an exclusion, but all other recruits actually have their stats increase like leveling in an RPG. Use your favorite recruits and their strength, health, etc will increase, netting you better stats and making missions easier with them.

One thing to note is that the method of recruiting is still tedious. While they did add balancing changes, letting some character drag characters a lot faster than you ever could in Portable Ops, dragging someone slightly faster across a huge stage is still dragging a character across a giant stage.

Very faithful reincarnation of the REX Hangar and arguably the best part of the game

All of this is pretty engaging and all for unlocking items and characters, but the focus of this game was the multiplayer modes. Online Multiplayer was a huge thing with Plus and all of the maps were expanded. Plus had maps for a lot of environments from MGS3 and my personal favorite, a remade version of the Rex Hangar from MGS1 with my favorite remix of MGS1’s Encounter theme music. (Which I’m salty that this game isn’t PSTV Compatible because I really want to use that music in a video review)

The biggest downer about playing this game now is the fact that the Online Multiplayer is no longer up. The servers were taken down a long while back so Ad Hoc is your only multiplayer option. Why is it bad? Well, you have to think. How useful is a multiplayer game that doesn’t have multiplayer? It’s a huge inconvenience and turns this into a single player game that wasn’t meant to be a single player game.

That doesn’t really affect the overall single player length, though. That is all up to the Infinite Mission mode available. Each run of the first couple difficulties shouldn’t take much longer than 10-20 minutes, while a run of Infinite Mode can based on skill. You could run for 10 minutes or run for an hour. Regardless, it’s not very long if you solely play it for Single Player, which is the only thing you can play it for now.

Controls

If you’ve played Portable Ops, you know the controls of this game very well. First of all, no PSTV support, so you can’t play the game on a big TV. The Official Metal Gear Twitter channel keeps claiming they’re working with Sony on it, but after all this time, don’t expect it anytime soon.

The default control scheme, once again. The Left Analog Stick is used to move and the D-Pad/Right Analog is used for moving the camera. Note that this requires you to go into Settings and redirect the D-Pad controls to the camera. The L trigger is for the lock-on and R trigger is for firing your weapon. Then, face buttons. X can be used for rolling, Square for CQC/Physical attacks, Circle for item-switching, and Triangle for wall-hugging.

Presentation

Not as flawless as he is on the PS3, but Old Snake looks great in this game

Visually, it’s the same as Portable Ops, which was pretty good for a PSP game. There’s lots of details in the character models, and I could actively compare it with the visuals of Metal Gear Solid 3’s port to the 3DS. Lots of good stuff here, for the hardware it was made for.

Nothing else big about the performance. Load times are nice and short, no lag or frame issues. All around a well-optimized experience.

Game Title: Gal Gun Double Peace
Developer: IntiCreates, PQube
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 1.3 GB
NA Availability: Retail | Digital Download (August 2, 2016)
EU Availability: Retail | Digital Download
PSTV Support: No

Over the course of the web site, I don’t think I’ve played many games that started out showing the Unreal Engine logo for a handheld game. Sure, maybe some of them have used the engine, but I don’t think many have actually shown the logo right when you boot the game up. That’s a lot of games, too. What you’re reading right now is the site’s 400th review!

Getting back on topic, though, I played a game this week that smacked the Unreal Engine logo first when the game booted up. It was a shooting game, too, so that’s sure to bring at least a little bit of hype for the PS Vita community. Not so much for the PSTV community, though, since it isn’t compatible.

Then, the fact settles in that the game in question isn’t really in league with games like Call of Duty or Halo. It’s more of an anime fan’s game. Actually, let me rephrase that as more “lewd” anime fan’s game, as you’ll inevitably find out in a moment. Here is my review of the Vita version of Gal Gun: Double Peace!

Story

New-age cupids now call Goddesses on phones

Do you remember episodes of various anime where the main character got put under some magic potion or spell that caused every girl around him to be incredibly attracted to him and needing to hug, grope, kiss, and all around confess their undying love for him? If you do, this game’s story is just like that sort of episode style.

In Gal Gun, an Angel is sent to Earth to help a guy in high school find his true love as part of her own “exams” on becoming a fully-fledged Cupid. What ends up happening, though, is that her rendition of the Cupid Arrows is overcharged with full power, making him so attractive that literally every girl in the area obsessively attracted to him and reduces his overall attractiveness in the long term, meaning that he has 24 hours to accept the love of a girl or he will never be capable of receiving love for the rest of his life.

My opinion of the story didn’t really change from start to finish. I feel that this type of story is great for one episode of an anime, but not an entire series. The fact that this covers an entire game feels a little stretched. While each path does offer a lot of character background for the MC and the possible girls to couple with him, it felt like there just wasn’t enough depth to it.

Gameplay

This is a pretty typical battle.  Fighting girls out in the open and the shy ones hiding behind lockers

Gal Gun is like a wacky mix of a rail-shooter and a dating simulator. Each playable stage and boss is in a first-person shooting fashion on-rails (meaning you don’t have free movement) and between these segments, you have scenes, dialogue choices to affect affection levels, and mini-games that will also increase your Affection with a certain girl.

When you first boot up the game, you have several game modes to choose from. Story lets you play the game’s Story Mode. Score Attack lets you just go through a stage in shooting-mode for high scores. Collection lets you look at game data and character information you’ve found in the game through hidden items in each stage. Dressing Room lets you dress up any of the girls in the game with costumes you’ve found. Options lets you change game settings. Game Sharing allows you to upload your save data to the PlayStation Network.

Moving through the game In Story Mode is in the form of stages and character paths. When you reach a certain story point, you choose who you “love”, and that sends you down a specific story path geared towards winning the love of the girl you’ve chosen. At the start, you only have “canon” scenarios in the form of 2 girls that the Main Character grew up with. But, once you beat the game, more paths become available to you for replays. Along with that, each character path has several endings, like Bad, Good, and True endings.

This is where you can choose which story path to take

Once this is chosen, you go between Rail-Shooting Stages and Story areas each time you go through story progression. You also have a shop between stages for items to help you or add to a different story path.

The Rail stages are where you have your shooting elements. You move through 3D areas with enemies running towards you, attacking your with objects in their hands or what they say in the form of flying kanji. Your task is to shoot them down to be able to make them pass out and “defeat” them. You can do this either by shooting or by going into a special “Doki Doki” mode with energy gained from defeating past enemies, allowing you to do touch mini-games to cause large explosions that can take out many enemies all at once. These also change your stats for dialogue choices.

Once you get through a stage, you’ll be passed along to story events where you will interact with the girl of your chosen path and be able to choose dialogue choices for situations and increase your affection level with them, which directly affects which ending you’ll get. The higher the affection level, the better the ending.

Doing well for feathers is very important for one character path

After each stage, you’re rewarded with MP used for reviving if you die during a stage and “Angel Points” that are used as currency in the game’s shop.

Now let’s talk about this game’s level of “fan service”. When you play this game, you’re going to have hordes of schoolgirls assaulting you with love confessions and love letters. Your only resistance is to shoot them up with pheromone bullets until they pass out from the emotional thrill. And all of the mini-games mostly involve rubbing their bodies in choice locations Like their face, chest, ankles, hips, butt, etc to essentially cause them pleasure and make them more attracted to you.

Then, with certain scenes and the “demon energy” enemies, you have some very specific fetish fan service in how they act. By specific, I mean that the game programs ways of acting, moving, etc in such a way that it is clear and very apparent fan service bits for people with a couple very specific sexual fantasy types (If you want specifics, they are the typical “Tentacle Porn” for Japan and there is a pretty decent amount of material that screams out to the Foot Fetish community). These are somewhat at a minimum and aren’t as blatant in story as in games like Senran Kagura Estival Versus, but they’re definitely there, so there’s a fan service factor you should think on before purchasing.

Yeah, I don’t even need to explain what’s going on here.  Fanservice

So, how does this all come together? The shooting elements work surprisingly well in the game, and you’re even scored on typical rail-shooter elements, from accuracy to how long it took to take down the enemies in the stage. The balancing between dating and shooting elements also offers a pretty balanced experience that doesn’t get repetitive over a single play-through.

Speaking of, the game isn’t an incredibly long one. One run through the story will probably take you about 4 hours, given story scene time as well as all of the combat and boss fights you’ll have to go through. After you beat the game, you unlock new paths to go through which in turn unlock further paths. So, 4 hours to beat it once, and more on top of that if you want to see different endings and different story paths. If you really enjoy it, it ends up piling up that time.

Controls

First off, the game is not compatible with the PlayStation TV, mostly due to how heavily and quickly the touch screen is used in some of the mini-games. Even with the Dual Shock 4 Touchpad, it’d be hard to keep up with the time limitations on these mini-games while using the PSTV.

The D-Pad doesn’t do anything outside of menus, while the Left Analog moves your cursor during gameplay as does the Right Analog Stick. The L and R triggers are used for zooming during combat which in turn will reveal hidden enemies and items used in Gallery and Dressing Room modes. X and Circle don’t really do anything outside of menus. But Square is used for firing off bullets and Triangle can initiate Doki Doki Mode.

The rest is handled with the touch screen, which does have some exclusive features. Choosing paths to go down is done with touch, as it moving the camera during boss-level enemy hordes and almost everything in the mini-games.

Presentation

I had to choose this because she’s just so cute when she smiles

Visually, the game deserves props. The 3D renders are done really well and sometimes it’s hard to tell when something is an active render as opposed to a 3D render made for a visual novel-style scene. That’s how well it all flows together.

There are a couple things that need some work, though: Load Times and Frame-Rate. The loading sequences can get pretty long. Sometimes, loading a stage or even the game itself when it first starts can take a good 30+ seconds to do. It makes waiting around get a little tedious. And the frame-rate drops whenever the camera moves while enemies are on-screen or when a large number of enemies are on-screen. It can mess up your shooting a fair bit.

Game Title: Spy Chameleon RBG Agent
Developer: Unfinished Pixel
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 414 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Stealth Games. When I think of stealth games, my mind immediately goes to Metal Gear Solid. No, not the new half stealth half mindless shooter Metal Gear games, but way back on the PS One with the original Metal Gear Solid. Where you had to worry about where enemy sight was at and finding a good strategic way around every enemy. When you didn’t have the EZ Gun to tranquilize everyone.

Old-fashioned stealth isn’t used in games all that much anymore, but it is in some. The indie world has a lot of these games and the PS Vita does get some of these indies. That’s what I’m going to talk about today. Here is my official review of the stealth game, Spy Chameleon: RGB Agent!

Story

Normally, this type of indie has some sort of storyline to give you a scenario to justify what you’re doing. Unfortunately, Spy Chameleon doesn’t give you any sort of scenario. There isn’t one written down in the manual, either. Just, nothing. You’re thrown in and do stuff without any knowledge as to why.

Gameplay

Spy Chameleon is an over-head stealth game. When you play the game, you’ll be going through stages with the task of not being seen at all, utilizing the natural ability of the chameleon to blend into your surroundings. There aren’t many other elements in play here, so it is basically just a stealth game.

When you first start the game, you can set whether you want to be on the Normal or Hard difficulties, but you can always go back and play through the other difficulty later on. There are no other game modes for you to play, though. The main campaign of levels as well as the same levels in the other difficulty are everything at your disposal to do in the game.

When you’re playing through any of the 75 stages, you’ll be in a top-down environment with you, enemies, and collectible items up for grabs. Your goal in each stage is to collect flies (collectibles) and reach the exit to complete the stage. You’ll need flies to be able to unlock later missions, so it is always a good idea to try to gain as many flies as you can before leaving.

There are some basic stealth elements here like avoiding enemy sight and running behind enemies, but Spy Chameleon makes itself unique with the chameleon’s ability to change his skin color. There are 4 colors you can do, color-coded for the four face buttons. Blue for X, Pink for Square, Green for Triangle, and Red for Circle. There are also many environment areas the same color, be it colored lighting or spilled paint. When in these areas and you make yourself the same color, you are completely hidden from any and all enemies, as long as you don’t physically bump into them.

As you play through each set of stages, there are other elements that are thrown in. While one set may throw in enemies you can eat, another may introduce cardboard boxes you can hide and move around in (big Metal Gear reference right there). This all leads up to the final area where all previous elements are implemented for the biggest challenge.

Speaking of, I wouldn’t call this one of the console-throwing games for difficulty. While it is true that Hard Mode is very difficult and some stages in normal won’t be passed with flying colors on your first try, I didn’t find this game to be overly difficult. Not that it’s a bad thing, but just to throw it out there to those hardcore stealth fans that may be looking for a large challenge. You won’t find that here.

Now, let’s talk about how long the game, or rather, isn’t. There are 75 stages for you to go through and, given time to repeat and master, I would give each stage an average of about a minute on normal mode. That would leave the entire game between 1 and 2 hours long. While you can easily double this by going through again on Hard Mode, the game isn’t going to last you very long. Aside from beating your own scores, there’s not much replay value here.

Controls

First of all, you will be happy to know that Spy Chameleon is compatible with the PlayStation TV. I apologize for not having a video review to go along with this, but I do have my reasons. I’m starting to adjust to training and working my new job at Apple Care, so it may take a week or two to fully adjust to the new flow of my time for reviews. For now, no video review of Spy Chameleon.

There are no touch controls to worry about, so it’s all down to physical controls. Movement is done with the D-Pad and Left Analog Stick, and the camera can be used with the Right Analog Stick. You use the face buttons to change your color as I said in the last section. X turns you blue, Square turns you pink, Triangle turns you green, and Circle turns you red. Start opens the menu and that’s pretty much it. The triggers don’t do anything, nor does the select button.

Even though story was skipped out for this indie, a control explanation was not. The first few levels will show you everything you need to know for controlling and understanding the game.

Presentation

The presentation section is where we get one of the problems, but that’s not up first. Visually, the game looks nice. The 3D models look pretty nice on the screen. When you see zoomed-in renders you can see some blemishes and jagged edges, but since it is an over-top game, it makes it look nice and it’s easy to forgive that aspect.

Frame-drops are the main culprit here. When you start some stages or move to certain areas, the frame-rate stutters for a few seconds. Thankfully, this was always localized to a stage loading, so it never causes problems during gameplay.

That’s something you don’t see in the PS4 version. It’s not something that’s going to break the game, but it’s something to note. It’s also worth noting that Spy Chameleon uses the extra RAM available on the Vita, so it’s not like the developer didn’t optimize the features enough.

It looks like it’s that time of the month, once again. It’s time to look back, take a break from reviews for a few days, and recap on all the site has done this month.

To be honest, there should be a few more reviews in here, but let’s just say I’ve started on some more projects that I won’t be revealing just yet. Big things are to come is all I will say on that

So, here are the 13 reviews I’ve posted in the month of July 2016:

Nintendo 3DS Reviews

Mini Mario and Friends: Amiibo Challenge
NFC Reader / Writer
Pokemon: Heart Gold / Soul Silver
Super Mario Bros

PlayStation Vita Reviews

10 Second Ninja X
Adventures of Mana
Gal Gun: Double Peace
God Eater: Resurrection
LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus
Spy Chameleon
Twitch

Retro Hardware

Nintendo DS

13 reviews is kind of great for me, especially considering I’ve had a lot of work training taking up my free time lately. I’ve got lots more to come and very soon, so stay tuned for my PSTV recap in a couple days and lots of reviews in August!

Game Title: Shiren the Wanderer The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate
Developer: Chunsoft, Aksys Games (Publisher)
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download Size: 399 MB
NA Availability: Retail | Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download

Rogue likes on the Vita. I can say there are a few. If there were any closest to the Rogue-like RPG sense that typical JRPG fans can get into, Sorcery Saga would be it. I played a bit of that game. It was cute and adorable. It also had that turn-based movement that makes Rogue-likes be a turn-based RPG while feeling like an Action RPG. Going into dungeons, enemies moving with you, resetting your level when you leave. The whole nine yards.

I can’t say I mastered Sorcery Saga, or even finished it. But, there is another RPG like this that just happened to release recently for the PS Vita. Ever hear of the Shiren the Wandere series? If you haven’t, you don’t lose points for me. After all, out of the 4 previous games of the series, the West only got to see the first and third games. Numbers 2 and 4 stayed in Japan, as did the original version of 5 for the DS.

Bringing more to the West, Aksys Games has brought over the PS Vita remake of Shiren 5. So, here is my review of Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate!

Story

The plot of the Shiren series is a lot like the Ys series. There are a lot of games with a lot of different adventures, but you don’t need knowledge of previous adventures to play the new ones. This is what I’d bet to be the reason that they removed the 5 for the localized game title. Because every time a number is in there, people start worrying about needing to play prior games.

The story revolves around a traveler, Shiren, and his pet talking ferret that reminds he heavily of Chamo from the Negima series. They are on a journey to the Tower of Fortune to challenge the deity that lives there, deciding the fates of everyone in the world. In the process, they meet up with and gain a lot of allies that have their own reasons for visiting the Tower of Fortune to change destiny, each with their own backstory.

As a I said, and that summary shows it, I felt a pretty big Ys vibe all throughout the game. If you like those games, this game’s plot will fit right in for you.

Gameplay

Shiren the Wanderer is a rogue-like game with RPG elements thrown into the mix. Every dungeon you’ll be traversing will be in true rogue-like fashion with resetting levels and inventory, different floors to explore, and a leveling system to help characters grow not only in stats but abilities as well. Think of it like Sorcery Saga, except not mission-based.

You’ll be progressing through the game by exploring an over world map. Unlike Sorcery Saga, there is no menu-based exploration. You freely roam the over world and come to towns and dungeons on your own. The only twist is that dungeons between towns are all randomized, so the forest path you go through the first time will have a completely different layout if you backtrack and go through it again while still maintaining that “over world” feel.

Your main quest will be to tackle the Tower of Fortune, which is divided into several dungeons. The idea is to tackle them from easiest to hardest, although you can try to tackle them in any order you want. It just isn’t a good idea to jump into the third tower dungeon with a character barely around Level 5-10. I’ve tried and it doesn’t end well. As you climb the tower, though, you’ll also uncover more story and be able to recruit more allies, so it’s not solely on gameplay alone.

Now, let’s get to dungeon-crawling 101. Each dungeon is laid out like a grid and everything moves together. You move, enemies move. You attack, enemies attack. Every action is mirrored by everything in the dungeon, and the includes dashing. Dash for 5 squares and it’s no different from walking 5 squares. You never actually go faster than the enemies do. Players of Sorcery Saga will know what I’m talking about, but I’d imagine at least a few of you didn’t, especially after seeing SS’s Limited Edition that came with a baby bib.

Now, levels and item acquisition. When you start your game, or you die and have to go back to the dungeon later, you start from scratch. No items. Level 1. Everything you need you find laying around dungeons. Weapons, shields, recovery items, and food. You find a sword, you can equip and use it. You find herbs, you can use them when your health is low and you don’t have room to run from enemies for it to naturally regenerate. You can also find merchants to buy items from, but that is strictly random, so don’t count on it happening when you need it to.

Then, we get to our last 2 major parts of gameplay: Companions and Dying. You have many companions that go with you from optional events, but you also have companions that must go with you from the storyline. If you’re running through a dungeon and get cornered by a horde of enemies you can’t work around before dying, you’ll go back to the nearest town. Story companions, however, do not go back to the nearest town. Whatever floor you left them on, they will remain there until you get back.

Then, dying. When you die in a dungeon, you get the option to request aid or just respawn back at the town. Requesting Aid is a multiplayer feature, enabling you to have other people playing the game help you through the Co-Op features built into the local multiplayer. This will let you continue the dungeon where you died, instead of starting over and having to do everything from town again.

In theory, this is a great feature. However, how many of you have a lot of Vita friends around? Probably not very many with handheld friends around in general. More often than not, you’re going to just cancel the request for aid and respawn back at the town. This is a pretty big setback, so always be careful when navigating dungeons. The Right Stick camera controls are there for a reason. This isn’t a casual game. It can and will put you in very tough spots early on.

How does it all come together? For the most part, it comes together in a pretty solid way. Everything flows much nicer and with much faster pacing than games like Sorcery Saga did. The only thing I did not like was the dash feature. While normal movement flows nice and smooth, the dash feels more like a mad sprint. It moves far too quickly and often will stop itself in mid-dash, even through there’s nothing obstructing your way. It feels a little clunky compared to the nice flow of the other gameplay features.

As far as time is concerned, it’s hard to tell as I never got the chance to see a timer while I played the game. With several dungeons and the inevitable time you’ll be spending re-doing some of the key dungeons from dying, it’s gonna keep you busy for a nice, long while.

Controls

First of all, the game is fully compatible with the PlayStation TV, which is a nice thing that Aksys always makes sure the games they localize can do. Nothing to fear about early-release problems like they had with Zero Escape 3. My review copy worked on the PSTV from the first day I had it from them.

By default, you can only move with the D-Pad with the Right Analog Stick used for the camera. With a quick trip into the options menu, however, you can enable the Left Stick for movement as well. The two triggers are used for easy equipping from the menu or buying several of the same item from a shop or vendor.

Then we have the face buttons. X is used for attacking or using items and Square is used for changing what direction you’re facing. Triangle is used for pulling up the menu, and Circle is used for dashing. Of course, not a word of these are explained to you. Not a single bit. You start the game and you’re on your own. A classic case of a game throwing you under the bus, not something a difficult game should do to a player.

Presentation

Shiren the Wanderer is a 2D game and has a bit of enhancement done since the original DS release that never came west. If you look really, really closely, you’ll notice some jagged parts on the character models, but this requires you to hold the screen much too close to your face. I don’t notice these unless the screen is about 3-4 inches from my eyes or closer, and if you’re holding a handheld that close, that’s not very healthy. It’s easy to forgive.

The rest I have no complaints about. The game is optimized pretty nicely. No lag, load times are nice a slow, and the music very much fits the 2D style that the game portrays.

Every month, I always work hard at maintaining my PlayStation TV Compatibility List, which is not an easy task. Spending a good few hours every day searching for info, contacting publishers, and contacting developers to suggest and explain why PSTV Compatibility is important is a lot of work. Granted, I enjoy every second of it, but it’s still a lot of effort.

That goes for the recaps, too. Well, except that’s not as much work. I can write up a recap in, like, 10 minutes. But they are essentially the results of all of that work. The recaps show all the games I found out compatibility for throughout a particular month.

So, let’s see what we’ve got. Here’s my PSTV Recap for July 2016: (Sorry, no video this time).

Japan

Dynasty Warriors Eiketsuden
Idol Death Game TV
New Interpretation Stranger of Sword City
Strawberry Nauts
World’s Longest 5 Minutes

North America

10 Second Ninja X
Dungeon Punks
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
God Eater: Resurrection
Last Wings
Longest 5 Minutes
Mobile Suite Gundam: Extreme Vs Force
Spy Chameleon: RGB Agent
Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni
Will: A Wonderful World

15 isn’t the largest list we’ve had, but not the smallest either. Well, technically 14 because Longest 5 Minutes and World’s Longest 5 Minutes are the same game, just with different names in Japan and North America. But, there you go! I add to this list frequently, so be sure to check in. Or, you can just fill out the Mailing List form on the Compatibility List article and receive emails when it is updated!

Game Title: Super Mario Bros. 2
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Type: Virtual Console (NES)
Download Size: 62 Blocks
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download

The NES trilogy for the Super Mario Bros series is legendary in the eyes of many gamers. I recall the original Super Mario Bros as the first video game I ever played. So, of course the series has a special place in my heart. Though nostalgia certainly helped me to forget many of the little issues on the technical side that plagued the game. The original had a lot of graphical glitches that I don’t remember seeing until I went back on my 2DS via Virtual Console.

So, upon looking into and buying more of the classic games to play, I expected to see more things. Not only graphical glitches, but all around different parts of the games that I essentially am re-discovering in my replays of those games.

We don’t need me to keep droning on about nostalgia, though. Too much droning is something I personally dislike that keeps me from something I’m here for, so here we go. With the first game done, here’s my retro review of Super Mario Bros. 2!

Story

This is just one way to not be as disappointed by the ending

The storyline of this game is something that really grinds the gears of the series fan base, but if you just take a look in the instruction booklet, you’ll understand why it is what it is.

One night, Mario has a dream and in this dream, his subconscious is taken to another world, known as Dream World (not to be confused with Dreamland from the Kirby series). A fiend known as Wart has taken over Dream World and imprisoned its inhabitants. What’s left asks Mario to travel through Dream World and defeat Wart. Then he, and his own subconscious’ version of his brother, Toad, and Princess Peach, move in to do just that.

The story of the game was wacky and a lot of people didn’t like it for the fact that it’s, well, a dream. However, it is understandable for any who go into the manual, or digital manual here, and read the story so you aren’t surprised and upset at the ending.

Gameplay

A lot of people will admit this was a very creepy part of the game

Much like the first game, SMB2 is a side-scrolling plat former with combat elements. The main difference here is that there is a much bigger focus on combat in the game, with a lot of different bosses than just dodging Bowser like the original had. You’ll still have a lot of plat forming to do, but reaching the end won’t be nearly as easy.

Progressing through the game is much like the original, in that you complete a stage and are taken to the next, and continue the process until you’ve gone through all seven worlds the game has to offer. Pretty easy and in tune with how a lot of NES games work. Heck, I’ve even played more recent games that play like this.

When you start each world, you have four different characters to choose from: Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Princess Peach. Each character has their own traits, like Luigi’s flutter kick that lets his jump travel further and Peach’s ability to hover across long distances. This helps you traverse levels, particularly with Luigi and Peach, allowing you to essentially skip over some sections and enemies to make it easier to do. Every level is doable with any of the 4 characters, though.

Team Princess Peach, anyone?  Okay, I admit I used Luigi more

The main “gimmick” of the game is being able to jump on top of enemies and items and plucking them out of the ground and throwing them. There are grass items all over every map you can move over and pick up to pull up items or just vegetables being used to throw at enemies and bosses. You can also do this for most enemies and is crucial for getting the ability to traverse longer gaps (like plucking an enemy off their flying carpet to use said carpet to move further into the stage)

This is crucial for the many mini-bosses and major bosses you’ll be fighting in the game. There will always either be items to pick up and throw at enemies or enemy projectiles. The most common is fighting Birdo. She will fire eggs at you that you can jump on, pick up, and toss back at her to defeat her. Every boss will have something around you can toss at them.

Now, the main aspect that increases the difficulty are the puzzle elements thrown in. It won’t just be a straight stretch. You’ll come across many locked doors that require you to explore various paths for keys. Getting to these sections can be very tricky, with precise timing to be able to avoid certain enemies. There is also the element of a certain enemy following you between rooms so long as you’re holding a key, so it can be a bit of a race to the door.

Birdo was the frequent mini-boss that taught you how to fight

This difficulty is balanced through the use of Virtual Console’s save-stat feature. At the start of a tricky section, just create a restore point so you can go back to it if you run into problems and get a Game Over. Without this, it’s a very difficult experience to go through without getting a Game Over.

So, how long is the game? There are seven worlds, and each stage is about, say…2 minutes on average. Without accounting for retries and Game Overs, I’d put the game around 2 hours, give or take. About the same amount of time it takes to beat the original game. This isn’t very long, but the game isn’t expensive, so that can be forgiven.

Controls

We are looking at a very simple game design so the controls are just as simple. Since this game doesn’t have a 2-player mode, you don’t need to worry yourself about switching controllers like you have to in the original game, for those of us that prefer playing as Luigi.

You can use the D-Pad or Circle Pad to move. The A button is used for jumping and for picking up and throwing objects, you can use the B and/or X button. Pretty simple, as it should be. Since the NES controller only had a D-Pad, Start, Select, A, and B thrown on it.

Presentation

There is a lot more color here than in the previous game

The only issue I really have with the game is the graphical presentation. Visually, it looks a whole lot nicer than its predecessor. There was a lot more character and depth to the models. Granted, Peach looked alright in the original, but Mario and Luigi were kind of basic pixel-based renders. In this game, they look much more alive.

The problem is graphical glitching, much like the original game had. When you just up near the top of the screen, your character and the rest of the map will flicker and glitch out on you. It also does this in select other areas.

Outside of that, it runs and sounds very nice. The music glitches that plagued the original game are not in here at all, which is something I’m quite happy about, though fans may not be happy about when they see this game’s score versus the original.

8

Game Title: Laser Disco Defenders
Developer: Excalibur Games
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 285 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: No

If you could combine two gaming genres for one game, what would you choose? Rhythm and RPGs like Square Enix’s Theatrhythm Final Fantasy series? TPS and Racing? Puzzle and RTS? There are a lot of choices out there and, odds are, what you would choose has already been made in the indie world.

Combining genres has been done by games since forever but now we see more interesting and unique combinations. Indie games help mold these new combinations and offer new types of experiences to go through. So, that’s what we’re going to be going into today.

Ever played a cross between a rogue and a bullet hell title? Now you have. Here’s my review of Laser Disco Defenders!

Story

Star Trek meets Disco. In the galaxy, there is a group of disco-loving Warriors aboard a starship. The four varied but groovy shipmates are known as the Laser Disco Defenders, protecting the galaxy from all music that would tear down the power of disco. Monotone, a being aiming to tear that down has been tracked to a cave in a moon. The Defenders then set out to find him and make sure his plan does not succeed.

The plot of the game is as funny as the description sounds. It has this serious Star Trek-like feel to it but then throws all of this wacky disco lingo into the mix to make it have a very comedic flow to it. Each time you get a cut scene, you’ll be laughing and chuckling because of how well the disco lingo can fit into this science fiction plot line.

Gameplay

Laser Disco Defenders is like some crazy mix between rogues like The Binding of Isaac and Bullet Hell games. You’ll be going through randomly-generated rooms in dungeons, firing off lasers towards enemies as well as fighting bosses.

When the game begins, you’ll see the introduction cutscenes, but then you’ll be thrown into the Main Menu, where you can choose what game mode you’d like to play. The main two modes are Story Mode and Endless Mode, though you have to beat Story Mode before you can unlock and play Endless Mode. You also have the Tutorial which can lead straight into the Story Mode levels when you first want to learn how the game works.

Speaking of that, the game works by dropping you into a stage you can freely wander around in with your jet pack, filled with obstacles and enemies. In every stage, you must defeat all enemies to open up a portal that leads to the next stage. You then repeat this process until you get through everything.

This sounds simple, but what makes this game unique makes it anything but. When you fire a laser, the laser doesn’t disappear once it hits a wall, hazard, or enemy. It stays in the level, endlessly ricocheting around the level until you leave. So, if you have 5 enemies and have good aim, you’ll have to avoid enemy fire as well as the lasers you fired, yourself. If you have a quick trigger finger like me, you’re going to be dodging a lot of your own lasers that can hurt you just as easily as enemies can. Dodging lasers may sound easy, but when you’re in a small room with 50 small lasers, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

To help you with this, there are four different characters to use, all with different attack types and speeds. Some have more health but move slower, while other characters move very quickly but have small amounts of health and quicker attacks. There are also a lot of costumes and accessories you can unlock as you play to help with movement and some that help you aim towards enemies.

The variety is good because the way movement works feels really clunky. Moving around with the super-fast character Liz is pretty intense, but no matter what character you use, the movement methods of going up and down feels really sluggish and out of place in this type of game. It doesn’t make the game any harder than it already is, but the flow just feels really clunky.

The difficulty level of how the game works is where the game’s longevity comes into play. Since the game randomly generates maps, you can’t memorize enemy locations to master the game. You have to increase your skill and that means lots and lots and lots of retries. If you are a master, the game isn’t really that long. However, the difficulty and learning curve are what gives it the length it has.

You can’t really fault the game for it’s difficulty, since it is explained and it is purely a matter of skill with being careful with your shots. However, even with the difficulty curve in mind, it won’t take you long to play through it. Maybe a couple hours or so.

Controls

Moving around in the game is a pretty simple task. However, this is not compatible with the PlayStation TV. I won’t go diving deep into reasoning, but the developers are considering added support via a patch later on, so it might be compatible soon enough.

One thing you should note is that the D-Pad is not used for movement. That is reserved for the Left Analog Stick. Even the menus are navigated with the Left Analog Stick. This may throw you for a loop at first, but there are on-screen prompts for everything to make sure you’re never thrown under the bus for anything.

Presentation

Visually, the game is 2D, but it looks very colorful and cute. The color scheme of everything, from the costumes to the lasers really fits the disco theme of the game. Even further, the portals between stages has a very disco-ball feel to them, which further helps that theme stick out as you play.

Performance has no issues. The game runs well, sound quality is nice, and all around is optimized for the Vita in a very nice manner. Granted, PSTV Support would have been nice, but otherwise, it is well-optimized.

Game Title: The Legend of Spyro The Eternal Night
Developer: Sierra, Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Type: DS
NA Availability: Retail
EU Availability: Retail

There are a lot of handheld gamers over in the west that would like to play the Spyro the Dragon games.  Europe doesn’t have an issue, but North America does.  When you look at the PS Vita, you currently cannot play the Spyro PS One games on the system or on the PSTV.  With how much I played Year of the Dragon on my PSP, it is truly a shame.

Spyro fans do not have to fret, though.  There are some Spyro games available on the other side of the current handheld world, the 3DS.  Since the 3DS is compatible with Nintendo DS games, it can play the reboot trilogy.  Well, at least it can play the DS versions of the three reboot games, which are actual Spyro games and not just using Spyro in the Skylanders series.

When choosing which of these games to review, I found it pretty difficult at first.  But, I decided to go with the middle game.  While this doesn’t make sense for the story, it’ll make sense when I talk about the gameplay.  So, here’s my retro review of The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night!

Story

The Legend of Spyro Trilogy was interesting because it was like one big story.  Eternal Night comes in right when its predecessor left off.  After looking for Cynder and finding that she is leaving the temple to atone for the events of the previous game, Spyro gets caught up in a new plot involving a new villain named Maul that sends an army of apes to attack the temple where Spyro and Sparx live.

The story of the game is as a Spyro game is expected to be.  There is a serious element to everything going on, but there’s also a good bit of comedy thrown in as well.  You’re not likely to see a familiar sorceress rabbit hopping around, but it’s got a lot of charm to it.

Gameplay

Eternal Night is a 3D plat-former with combat elements thrown into the mix.  You will be jumping and gliding around on platforms and fighting enemies with fire breath and physical attacks as you go through the game.

Classic Spyro fans should recognize that kind of description because that’s exactly why I chose to do Eternal Night as opposed to the other two games of the trilogy.  Jumping, Gliding, Ramming, and breathing are inspired and come straight from the PS One trilogy.  Eternal Night on the DS plays very similar to how the PS One games played.

There are no stages to select, but just stages that are loaded as you progress the story.  Each of these stages has you navigating with a combination of fighting off enemies, solving puzzles, and reaching the end to keep the story going forward.  Plat-forming is the one element that Spyro fans will be familiar with.  You can jump and glide to move from platform to platform and navigate through each area.

Combat and puzzles are a little different this time around.  While breath attacks are pretty much the same as they always were, melee attacks have a combo system now.  When you approach an enemy, you can hit the attack button rapidly to hit them several times, which will eventually stun them, allowing you to launch them into the air and use the touch screen to apply a finishing move to defeat them.  There are also elemental attacks that you gain further into the game.

Puzzles are, by far, the most unique part of the game.  You will often come to rooms where the path is blocked.  To unblock the path, you must access mirror puzzles where you have a light shining across a grid and use different mirrors to reflect the light onto key areas that will unlock the next area.  While this is puzzling in itself, many of these have missing pieces that you must first collect in the immediate area before you can attempt the puzzle.

The way all of this works is one of things that I’m not a particular fan of.  Platforming is there, but sometimes it feels a little too robotic.  There are many areas where platforms are like stairs.  You have to jump.  Stop.  Jump.  Stop.  Over and over.  There just isn’t a smooth flow of what you’re doing and it gets to feeling a little old and repetitive pretty early in the experience.  I remember in the original games, you had a lot of platforming like that, but you could stay in a fast flow of things and tackle them with dashing and gliding, but this feels much more robotic.

Now, this does go on for a good amount of time for an action-ish game.  Eternal Night should last you about 5-6 hours, the same amount of time as you’d take in the console versions of the game.  With how affordable the game is now, that’s a good amount of content to go through.

Controls

The controls aren’t bad but limited.  The D-Pad is used for moving around.  The R button is used to center the camera, since this is a 3D game.  Now we have the face buttons.  A is used for breath attacks Y is used for melee attacks.  X is used for dodging and B is used for jumping / gliding.

Finally, the touch screen is used for all of the puzzles and the finishing move.  That is the one thing I want to say about the controls.  Finishers can only be done with the touch screen.  Since you have a split-second between hitting an enemy and needing to do the finisher, you pretty much have to be holding onto the stylus all the time as you play, which feels really awkward.

Presentation

Visually, the game looks similar to the PS One Spyro games.  3D games are hard to come by on the Nintendo DS, but sometimes 3D isn’t always a good thing.  Yes, the game has 3D environments and renders, but a lot of them look a bit blurred out and even for the DS, don’t look that polished.  People out there who are big on graphics should take note of that.

The rest of the presentation I don’t have any quarrels with, which is something I could get used to doing in reviews.  The game runs and plays well and the load times are nice and short.  It’s always nice to be able to only take points based on the actual game instead of both the game and how it plays.  I’m sure I’ll get more into this if/when I start moving onto different areas of handheld gaming in the future.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a giveaway, and I am bringing them back!  3DS fans will have to take a bit of a rain check this month as the first review with coming back is going to be a PS Vita giveaway.  So, as the above image shows, the August giveaway is going to be for a North America digital copy of God Eater: Resurrection!

To give a little information, God Eater Resurrection is a PS Vita Remake of the original game, God Eater, for the PSP.  It has all of the original content plus a lot of new content to expand the story and to add elements from its sequel, due out later this month!

To enter this giveaway, you don’t have to do much.  All you have to do is Follow me on Twitter, Retweet the Giveaway Tweet, and that’s it!

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/reviews2G

Giveaway Tweet: https://twitter.com/Reviews2G/status/762751371225493505

This Giveaway ends on August 31st at 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time and the winner shall be announced on the first day of September.  Best of luck, everyone!

Game Title: Hot Shots Golf World Invitational
Developer: Sony Computer Entertainment
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 1.1 GB
NA Compatibility: Digital Download | Retail
EU Compatibility: Digital Download | Retail
PSTV Support: No

Do you love Golf in video games as much as I do?  I highly doubt it.  I’ve spent many hours in GTA Online just playing Online Golf by myself.  I love Golf in GTA V/Online, and in other places, too.  Mario Golf?  I’m there.  Sure, I’m no pro at it, but I love to play Golf in real life, and I love to play Golf in video games.  It’s a surprise I’ve never written reviews here based on Golf Games.  There is that Mario Golf game for 3DS, but I just haven’t gotten around to its price tag (Seriously, I just checked Amazon and the retail is $43).

PlayStation gamers have always had sports games in the form of all of those big AAA titles like MLB The Show and Madden, but there’s been an incredibly cute sports series on PlayStation console for generations called Hot Shots, and those have gotten a lot of Golf-based games as well.  It’s only natural that I dive into the golfing world with it.

An early PS Vita title, here is my review of Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational!

Story

Due to this game having no story, this section shall remain blank

Gameplay

World Invitational is a sports game that simulates golfing.  Throughout your journey, you’ll be going through various golf courses and tournaments, aiming for the best score as well as unlocking new characters, outfits, club types, and ball types to customize the game from your character’s looks to how the game is played.

To play the game, you basically go between Single Player, Multiplayer, and Online Multiplayer.  Single Player offers three game modes: Challenge for tackling tournaments, Stroke for tackling a custom course of your choosing, and Training to tackle a course of your choosing for the purpose of practicing until you fully understand the system of the game.  Then, Multiplayer and Online allows you to choose a course and set custom rules, but with other players instead of just you or you and the game’s AI.

Games of golf are simple enough to set up, being on specific courses and setting whether you want to 9 or 18 holes.  Though do note that all of the lengths in Challenge Mode are set lengths.  There will be a lot of 18-hole tournaments, so prepare to lose a lot of time in that.  Otherwise, you go in and start by choosing a character, club set, and ball set.  Each character has stats with different strengths and the same goes for club and ball sets.  There are a lot of factors, like Power, Controlling Shots, Impact Shots, Ball Spin, etc and each character and set have their own strengths with all of those stats.

This amount of depth also comes into the actual gameplay.  In GTA Online Golf, you pretty much only have to worry about what club you use and the wind/weather.  You have to worry about that here as well, but you also have to take all of those stats into account as well as weather, what’s around the course, and other factors.  This is not a simple golf game.  Rather, the system is quite in-depth.

The biggest moving point of the game is being able to unlock new characters and features.  When you go through Challenge Mode, every rank ends in a “Boss Fight” with a character.  Beat the character and you can unlock and use them.  I personally love how adorable Isabelle is, whom is the first unlockable character in Challenge Mode.  Though the biggest thing for enhancing the game is going further to unlock new clubs and ball sets so you can experiment to find out what stats you prefer to be on top as you play.

All of this comes together quite well.  Lots of times, Golf is just a mini-game as a part of a larger game, but with the amount of depth here, it really shines as an entire game around the sport.  And speaking of depth, if you go through all of Challenge Mode, which is essentially the main campaign of these games, you’ll be spending at least 6 hours of your time golfing, golfing, and golfing some more.  Not a bad turnaround especially since I bought this when it was on sale for under $10.

Controls

If you’re hoping for golf on the big screen, you’ll need to look for another game, because World Invitational is not PSTV Compatible.  Of course, if you’re still on 3.60, you can use a certain homebrew to temporarily disable the whitelist and manage.  But, I don’t go in-depth about that sort of thing.  That’s more for Hack Informer to go into.  The point?  It’s not compatible with the PSTV.

Controlling the game is pretty simple, but the game does kind of throw you under the bus and not explanation what those controls are.  It’s one of those games where you have to just hit buttons until you know what to do.

Speaking of what to do, let me tell you.  You use the Analog Sticks to move the camera around as you aim your shot.  The D-Pad also moves the camera angle, but it actually moves where you’re aiming.  The L and R triggers are used to move how far you intend to hit the golf ball.  Then we get into something a bit trickier.  The Face Buttons.

First off, if you are using a Japanese system, like I do, the X and Circle button controls are swapped.  If you’re on a western unit, X is used for hitting the ball and Circle can move the camera.  If on a Japanese unit, X is for camera and Circle is for hitting the ball.  Triangle is also used to move the camera to explore the course.  Finally, Square can toggle the “Power” shots that can get you more distance.

Presentation

Visually, the game is adorable with its anime-style visuals that the series has always been known for.  Every character is their own way of cute and the style of the game brings that cuteness out that much further.  As far as the in-game graphics go, it looks pretty nice for a Vita title.  Sure, there’s the occasional jagged edge, but it’s nothing to get excited about.  It’s colorful, adorable, and pretty smooth for the most part.

It performs well, too.  Frame-rate is smooth and clean, and there are no exceptionally long loading sequences.  I really can’t complain about anything here.

Game Title: Castlevania The Dracula X Chronicles
Developer: Konami
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: PSP
Download: 715 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: No

Vampires have been popular in media for a long time now, and no, I’m not talking about Twilight. Vampires have been in popular media culture for long before the Twilight phenomenon began. The Universal Studios original Dracula movie came out in 1931, 85 years ago. Before any video games were ever even being conceived and decades before Stephanie Meyer was born.

In video games, though, most of the well-known vampire lore comes from a single franchise, Castlevania. Ever since 1986, it has been the top gaming franchise around Count Dracula and vampires in general. With countless main series games and even a cross-over fighting game, there’s a lot to Castlevania. It is also home to what is considered to be one of the best PS One RPGs ever made, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Some don’t realize, though, that Symphony of the Night is a sequel to a previous game, and that game was completely remade for the PSP. Sporting the idea of a remake as well as a game collection, here is my retro review of Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles!

Story

Back in the 1700s, there was a time of darkness, when dark sorcerers conspired against humankind. They remained faithful to the Dark Lord of old, and performed a dark ritual in order to revive him. With the spilling of human blood, Count Dracula was once again reborn into the world of the living and his castle, Castlevania appeared as well.

As soon as this happened, Richter Belmont set out to enter the castle and rid the world of the evil vampire. Donning the legendary Vampire Killer Whip that had been passed down in his family, he was more than encouraged to enter Castlevania when Dracula kidnaps the love of his life. On the way, he is also joined by Maria Renard, once kidnapped but fighting with the power to control animals and magical creatures.

People who played the original Rondo of Blood will probably think that’s a drastically over dramatized version of the game’s story. However, in this remake, there is a much larger aspect of the storyline. There are more story scenes, and a long CG intro to add more to the mythos behind the game.

Gameplay

Dracula X Chronicles is a remake, collection, some cross between the two. Let’s put it down to the basics. Dracula X Chronicles lets you play a remake of the original Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, but remains true to its original with being a side-scrolling action game. But the best part about this is that it’s a game collection. You can unlock the original Rondo of Blood and famed Symphony of the Night as you play the game. It’s 3 games for the price of one.

So, the remake. Rondo of Blood was a 2D side-scrolling action game and so is DXC. You explore the game through lengthy stages that have you traversing dangerous environments, fighting off enemies, and ending with squaring off with a boss to gain access to the next area. Pretty simple, right? There’s a bit more depth and replayability because there are alternate paths and alternate versions of nearly every stage, so you can go through the game several times in a row and never have the exact, same stages as the last run.

Even though this is a remake, the game is still difficult like Rondo was. Every stage has tricky enemy placement and platform locations. While boss patterns can be learned quickly, navigating stages is tricky even when you know the layout. There’s only so much planning when you know that as soon as you jump down into a room, you’ll be surrounded within moments.

The way the balance works is that you can find and unlock Maria Renard as a playable character. Playing as Richter is a constant challenge, but Maria’s increased speed and way of attacking makes things a lot easier. Her Dragon Subweapon is every boss’s worst nightmare. It also adds more replayability because many scenes and endings are different depending on whether you’re playing as Richter or Maria when you fight off the final boss.

Now, with time, that’s where this being a collection really comes in handy. Dracula X might only take you a couple hours to beat if you’ve played it before. Take that 2-3 hours and then add on the 8-10 hours it takes to play Symphony of the Night and another 2-3 hours if you want to play the original Rondo of Blood. That 2-3 hours of game just turned into 15-20. There’s a lot of game here.

Controls

Moving around isn’t really that difficult. You can move around with the D-Pad, jump with X, attack with Square, and press up + Square to fire your sub-weapon. Finally, Triangle can be used for an “Item Crash”. There’s not a whole lot to look for or worry about.

Also, this is a no-go for PlayStation TV owners. Dracula X Chronicles does not launch on the PSTV, so if you have the micro-console and do not own a Vita, you’re out of luck. You can probably use a certain home brew application to get it working, but we won’t get into that. It’s not PSTV Compatible.

Presentation

Now, visuals. You remember how the Mega Man X 3D graphics PSP remake looked with all of those jagged edges on the character models? The same thing happened here. The environments and some enemies look pretty nice, but the character models just look so rough. There are jagged edges all over the place. Just something to note on. I know some of you are big on graphics when deciding a purchase.

How about the rest of the presentation? You should note that there are new Voice-Actors in the remake as well as this game’s version of Symphony of the Night. Honestly, I think it’s done a lot nicer in the remake, but that’s just my personal opinion.

Game Title: Super Mario Bros 3
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Type: Virtual Console (NES)
Download: 114 Blocks
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download

The Super Mario Bros NES trio of games is still looked upon today as not only classic games, but fun games that are still engaging today as they were back in the 1980s. The third game of which is still held as a fan favorite and arguably the peak of the series to date. Many would argue that (I would. My fav is Super Mario 64 and its DS remake), but it is no doubt that the Mario NES games are classics and looked back upon every time a new Mario platformer comes out.

I’ve taken you guys back to the past before with Virtual Console retro reviews. First, I covered the original game, and I skipped Deluxe and The Lost Levels in favor of sequential canon order with Super Mario Bros 2 last month. This month, it’s time to finish off the trilogy.

So, here is my retro review of what is considered one of the most classic platformers of all time, Super Mario Bros. 3!

Story

Once again, Bowser is up to no good and it is Mario’s job to save the day. Instead of attacking the Mushroom Kingdom, he sends his seven children to other countries in the Mushroom World to cause mayhem and transform all of its leaders into animals, unable to govern their nations. Mario and Luigi are sent out to take down the Koopalings and return the leaders to their rightful forms.

The plotline of SMB3 is interesting because it’s the center of a ton of fan theories. Until last year, it was all speculation, though Miyamoto himself came out in 2015 to confirm that one of the fan theories was right with the canon. But I won’t tell you all that right here and now, as that would be full of spoilers. Just take a quick google search and you can find that answer if you’re curious.

Gameplay

Like its predecessors, Super Mario Bros 3 is a side-scrolling platforming and action game. You’ll be going across various stages, jumping over obstacles, gaining power-ups, and fighting off enemies and bosses in your quest to defeat Bowser and his Koopalings.

SMB3 was different from previous games mostly in progression because it used an overworld map. Every world was a grid you could explore (like Super Mario Land 2 was). On the grid were stages you could explore, wandering enemies that you could fight in special stages, and other stages allowing you to do mini-games for extra lives or power-ups. It was different because you had different paths to take, so you could do Stage 1, then 3, and then the castle without doing Stage 2. There was more freedom of choice.

Most of the in-game changes were new power-ups, enemies, and environments you could explore. They took out the picking-up elements of SMB2, but did give you the option to carry a turtle shell if you find one to toss at enemies or puzzles that blocked the next area. However, the biggest change and most famous aspects of the game were the Tanooki and Raccoon Tail power-ups. This has been repeated in the series (and been a heated debate with PETA), but it made its debut in Super Mario Bros 3 with the ability to fly and glide around in stages.

The other notable change is how you fight bosses. In the first game, you had to avoid bosses and hit switches to dump them in lava. In the second, you picked up and threw items at them. In this game, you can stomp on them like you can normal enemies. Every Koopaling has a boss attack pattern and openings for when they are exposed. This added a bit of more strategy to boss battles.

This comes together as a good flow thanks to the game’s pacing. From the very first stage to the last one, you will quickly notice that SMB3 has very short stages. I would wager the stages in the game are half as long as previous games, if not shorter. It was almost weird at first, going from 2 to 3 with how much difference there is. Even if you walk through the stages instead of run, it feels much faster-paced with how quickly you finish stages. Even castles are short.

Despite the fact that there are short levels and it has fast pacing , it is still one of the longer early Mario games. One run through everyone should take you about 4-5 hours, which definitely makes this a bigger time-sink than previous games, and definitely worth the money on Virtual Console.

Speaking of Virtual Console, another thing that is interesting. Some VC titles allow for Download Play on the 3DS, and this is one of those games.

Controls

Being an NES game, like the previous two games, it’s very easy to control. The D-Pad is used to move around, and the Circle Pad can also do that for you. The A button is used to jump and the B and X buttons are used for attacking with a power-up or to hold and run.

I can’t really complain or say much about this because of how simple it is and how well the controls work.

Presentation

Now, let’s get this started. Visually, the game looks pretty nice with its graphics engine. It’s not blurry like the past two games and provides players with a very colorful world to explore.

However, there are problems here. Graphic glitches happen a lot. Whenever you move forward, the screen glitches on the right hand side, the top glitches when you jump near it and there’s an extra section of the screen lit up past the end of the actual game that isn’t there when you play the original game.

Another minor thing is that the music cuts out a lot when sound effects play from you or enemies. You recall how that happened in the first game? It’s worse here. It happens almost constantly and it’s quite irritating, as I enjoy the overworld music of this game.

Game Title: MeiQ Labyrinth of Death
Developer: Idea Factory, Compile Heart
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 1.4 GB
NA Availability: Retail | Digital Download
EU Availability: Retail | Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Idea Factory International has been bringing over Compile Heart games for a good few years now. The Neptunia series has been the big star of this, with all of the Re;Birth games and the various spin-offs like Neptunia U and the Noire SRPG. Aside from this, however, they’re dipping into even more ground that was recently not covered.

Aside from the otome Amnesia: Memories, more RPGs are coming west via IFI. If you recall, Trillion: God of Destruction was one of these games. Trillion was made as a new type of project of games by Compile Heart in Japan. He second game of that series was Death Under the Labyrinth. It was a first-person dungeon crawler out in Japan for a long time before it was finally announced to also be coming west.

Today, I bring you a review of that game. Although the name was changed, I just really like the name “Death Under the Labyrinth”. But to remain official and politically correct, here is my review of MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death!

Story

The world of MeiQ revolves around the Stars having the cosmic powers of rotating the planet and keeping life going. However, the stars have been going out, leaving the planet in a state of being static. When this happens, the world eventually comes to an end. However, in the past, special mages were gathered and sent through special towers connected to a demon world. Upon passing all trials, the chosen are granted the power to return the stars to their former glory and save the world from an otherwise grim end.

Much time has passed and the stars have lost their luster once again. With the world in its static state once again, chosen mages from all over the world are returned to a holy temple in order to be sent through the towers to save the world. Estra is the main character and one of the many mages sent through the towers. As she starts her first day at the temple, the quest to saving the world has begun.

The story of MeiQ I wouldn’t really call outstanding. While every character you can recruit and interact with has their own special personality, the game’s story just never goes from a normal type of RPG story to an epic or fun state. I had much more fun in gameplay than I did in story. None of the characters really grabbed me. It almost felt like many scenes were forced rather than flowing.

Gameplay

Death Under the Labyrinth is a first-person dungeon crawler, with just a little bit of Pokemon thrown in. During gameplay, you’ll be going from a world map menu to go to various shops or dungeons and in dungeons, you will be traveling in first-person fashion to move along and fight enemies, solve puzzles, and progress the story forward.

Main progressions, as shown above, is between dungeons and the World Map menu. I call it a menu because it’s, well, a menu. You just scroll up and down through a list of locations and then select one. You don’t have free-roam outside of dungeons, so it’s just a matter of navigating a menu. So, if you were expecting a town to run around, you won’t find it here.

When you are in the town, you do have a few places you can go. You can rest and save your game at the Inn, go to the Guild to take on quests to complete while doing the main story, the General Store for buying items, and the Machina Factory for customization of your Machina Units, which I will go into in just a moment. The other option is Depart, which lets you visit any of the available dungeons.

You won’t be spending much time in town, though. You will be spending the multitude of your time in dungeons. When you go into a dungeon, you will be on a grid, like most dungeon-crawlers of this type. You will move one grid at a time, essentially mapping out each floor as you explore with the ultimate goal of going to the next floor and repeat the process until you reach that dungeon’s boss.

This is pretty standard for dungeon crawlers, but there are two main points that make this game unique. The first is the fact that you don’t just clear a dungeon, move onto the next, etc. While that is the goal, there will be a lot of times where you’ll need to return to previous dungeons. When you get to the Red Tower, for example, the story will send you back to the already-cleared Black Tower to seek out a new area and boss in order to keep progressing in the Red Tower. It’s not just a dungeon to dungeon 2 to dungeon 3 type of deal. It helps switch and mix things up.

The second is the way of combat. In Death Under the Labyrinth, you can use your character to fight with skills, but you will mostly be using Guardians to fight for you. Guardians are powerful creatures that can be customized and given new abilities as they fight alongside you. For every dungeon you clear, you gain a new Guardian to use and each is strong in certain elements and not others. I could compare this to monster-catching games, but only after major bosses instead of everywhere you go.

Depending on your equipment, your Guardian will have different abilities to use, which also resembles the idea of Pokemon. This also breaks the norm for combat. In most first-person dungeon crawlers, battles are also in first person with 2D character sprites. In this game, it is fully in 3D and looks like a battle taken out of some 3D RPG. It’s different from the norm of first-person dungeon crawlers and gives off a unique feel to it.

This all comes together pretty well for the most part, but the combat system both helps and hurts the game. 3D battles look pretty cool for this type of game, but the pacing of battles really has a lot to be desired. I found myself constantly holding down the “Faster” option to skip animations because everything animates and goes so slow and sluggish. I like the battle system. I just don’t like its pacing.

How it all comes together is more in the form of how difficult the game is. Really, I’d call this a casual first-person dungeon crawler. I’ve dipped in both difficulties and you don’t need to do an excessive amount of grinding. So long as you are strategic in how you do battles and knowing when to heal your machina, you shouldn’t ever need to stop and go into grinding sessions. The first time I fought a major boss, I lost, but once I went in with differtent skills, I flew through it without any problems. It’s all about strategy.

Another aspect to the casual feel of it is the inclusion of Suspend Saves. If you’re in the middle of a dungeon and you have to go, you can perform a Suspend Save to save your progress. In most games, when you load a temporary save like this, it goes away and you can’t use it again. However, it stays in this game. I can load a suspend, and then turn the Vita off, load it back up again, and the suspend save is still there. This is very useful in case you load one of those saves and don’t mean to, or accidentally close the game afterwards.

Finally, we can talk about length. While the premise of the game only shows you going through four different dungeons, there are actually almost twice as many by the time you get towards the end of the game. I would gauge the game roughly with 2-3 hours per dungeon, making the entire game close to 20 hours, give or take. That’s pretty standard for the length of a handheld RPG and longer than I was hoping for when I first had the story tell me there were only 4 major dungeons.

Controls

First off, PSTV fans will be happy to know that the game is fully compatible with the PlayStation TV. While this will not have a video review due to this review going up in the middle of my work week, rest assured that it does work on the micro-console and I’ll put up a gameplay video of it later on in the week, when I have the time.

Menus are pretty easy to work through. D-Pad for moving through choices, X to select, and Circle to cancel. In dungeons, the D-Pad is your way of moving around. You will notice right away that the Left Analog Stick does not move your character. Instead, it changes your mini-map’s location. Perhaps they chose this to not use the touch screen and make the game work on the PSTV a little easier.

The L and R triggers are used to strafe in dungeons and the rest is handled by the face buttons. X interacts with objects like chests and elevators. Square pulls up a list of registered items to be easier to access. Triangle pulls up the various customization menus. Finally, Circle can be held to dash through a dungeon instead of walking if you want to see a random encounter faster or just move through that floor quicker.

I’ll admit that not being able to move with the Left Stick was a little weird at first, but it only took me a few minutes to adjust to only using the D-Pad.

Presentation

Visually, the game looks crisp and clean. The 2D models are done well and the game goes as far as to change the character’s costumes for cutscenes based on what costume and equipment you have on them in the game. That’s a nice little plus that a lot of 2D scene games don’t do. The 3D visuals of the dungeons and the battles look pretty nice as well. There aren’t a lot of jagged edges on the models and the attack animations look pretty smooth and a little flashy at times.

I can’t really say anything bad about the presentation or performance. As far as audio is concerned, this game is fully voiced, one of the firsts for Idea Factory International’s games. If you’re more used to the Neptunia games only being voiced in major scenes, you’ll have a nice surprise with this having dual audio and having all scenes voiced from start to finish.

Performance-wise, I can’t complain. Load times never exceed a few seconds and the animations for battle always go by without a hitch. No frame rate issues here.

Game Title: The Legend of Kusakari
Developer: Nnooo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Type: 3DS
Download: 319 Blocks
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download

Have you ever thought to yourself, ‘What if The Legend of Zelda wasn’t about fighting enemies and taking down Ganon? What if it was about using your sword to attack and chop down grass? What if that was the whole point of the game?’ No? Well, I can’t say I had ever thought about that during my childhood when I was enjoying Ocarina of Times back when it first came out. It’s a hypothetical question for something that would never really ever be a reality.

Or will it? The game I have to review for you today is something like that. Plays like Zelda, but is more of a scenario of exactly what I said in the above paragraph. Being a Zelda-like game that shows us what would happen if Zelda was actually about cutting grass, here is my review of The Legend of Kusakari!

Story

In the story of this game, the world as we know it is under attack by a Demon King and his army of monsters. With everyone running for their lives and hiding in their homes, a hero must step up and protect the world from harm, sword and shield in hand. But what about the hero’s journey? Must he try to fight monsters knee-deep in tall, unmowed grass? No, for an elderly mower armed with a scythe steps up to carve the path for the hero to fight on freshly-mowed grass.

I don’t know how many of you readers are now looking at your computer, phone, and tablet screens wondering if I’ve completely lost it. But, that is actually the story of this game. A hero goes to fight, and you are the mower cleaning the grass for his patch. It’s strange, and the lack of story but every chapter is even stranger for this kind of game, but there it is. I can’t say I can give props to the game for its story, but it does do good at being Zelda-like.

Gameplay

To be honest, I’m not sure how to classify this game. There isn’t really a genre it goes into. Action-Adventure would kind of hint that you fight monsters, which you don’t. Let’s just call it by the wacky name that I’ve come up with. The Legend of Kusakari is a grass-cutting puzzle game. There, I said it.

From the game’s Main Menu, you basically have Mission Mode, Endless Mode, and Options to go into. Mission Mode takes you through the 50 levels that make up the plot. Endless Mode is similar, but it just has you endlessly playing levels until you finally lose one. Then we have Options, which lets you see unlocked artwork and change game settings, like turning music on or off.

There’s not much to say about the separate modes, just go into a mode, select a stage, and go at it. So, let’s skip straight to how the game works. In each stage, you’re thrown in a 2D-ish environment with one goal: Cut All The Grass. You just navigate the level and you clear it once every blade of grass has been cut down by your scythe.

Of course, it isn’t really that simple. You have to cut the grass, but you also have to avoid NPCs and enemies that wander each stage. Getting hit by one of them lowers your health. To make things even more tense, many levels later in the game have gradually depleting HP, making you go through as quickly as possible and making you form strategies on when you need to direct yourself to the nearest Blue Grass, which functions as a healing herb.

That part above makes up a lot of the strategy, aside from all of the environment changes and maze-like level designs. But there are also some mild RPG elements thrown into the game as well. The more grass you cut in a single level, the more experience you get, allowing you to level up. Leveling makes your attacks have better range, be it a normal or spinning attack. This is also a key element to mastering the later levels of the game.

Now, I wouldn’t call this game difficult for a puzzle game. Most levels only took me a couple tries to get them right and pass them. However, I wouldn’t call it easy, either. A lot of good timing is called for and for a lot of the later half of the game, you’ll have to be dashing, which makes it very easy to get hit by enemies. It definitely takes practice and skill, but not a whole lot of it.

As far as length is concerned, don’t get too excited. Zelda titles normally last many hours, if not longer. With 50 levels to its campaign, and an average of 2-3 minutes per level, accounting for retries, I would be surprised if the story takes you more than 2 hours to finish. It’s certainly not a short game, and not surprising, given that it only uses a portion of the Zelda formula and creates a game out of it. Even with the $4.99 price tag, just be warned that you’re paying for only an hour or two of gameplay.

Controls

For a 3DS title, this game has an odd lack of control variety. First of all, you don’t use the touch screen for anything. When was the last time you played a 3DS game that had no touch controls? Not that it’s a bad thing, since the game is fast-paced, but it’s an interesting observation I made as I played my copy of the game.

In menus, you can use the D-Pad for navigation, but once you hit a stage, that is solely utilized with the Circle Pad. The D-Pad is pretty much disabled during actual levels of the game. Speaking of controls in levels, the L and R triggers are used for dashing. A is used for a spinning slash, and B is used for cutting. Finally, Start and Select pull up the menu to restart a stage or go back to the Main Menu. And that’s about it.

Presentation

I can’t say it’s the best-looking game on the 3DS. There are some jagged edges, but I can’t really complain. It doesn’t look terrible, but it doesn’t look great, either. I’ll just say that its design fits the scenario and the graphics aren’t the prettiest, but can be forgiven.

The menu music, though. I have no issues with the music in stages. It’s nice and kind of relaxing while you go and hack at that tall grass. But the menu music. The way they set up the quality of those trumpet noises drives me crazy. It got to the point where I intentionally muted my 2DS every time I had to go back to the menu screen, just so I wouldn’t have to listen to that music.

Game Title: Attack on Titan
Developer: Omega Force, Koei Tecmo
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 2.9 GB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Attack on Titan was and still is a phenomenom. When it launched in Japan, it got crazy-popular crazy-fast, and the same thing happened over in the West. The first season of the anime ended 2 years ago, yet I still see merchandise for it in stores everywhere. Every Hot Topic I go into, I see Scout Regiment jackets, Eren Jaeger bracelets, plushies, and the list just keeps going and going. Sure, it’s allegedly getting Season 2 next year after a million delays, but it’s got to be big to stay popular with merchandise still out for that long. Even Dragon Ball Z merchandise died down until they started making movies for it again.

With how popular it is, it’s a shock there haven’t been a dozen good games based on the anime and manga yet. The 3DS tried, with Attack on Titan: Humanity in Chains. But, it didn’t go over so well. It had a lot of hype, but the actual gameplay turned out to be pretty lackluster and clunky.

That’s not to say that can’t change for newer games, though. Having been a hit in Japan, the Attack on Titan game made by Musou experts, Koei Tecmo, has finally come West and there’s been a lot of hype about it actually being a pretty decent game. How decent? Well, let’s find out. Here’s my review of the Vita and PSTV version of Attack on Titan!

Story

The plot of the game is the same as the anime. The world depicted is one where humanity is on the brink of extinction after a race of giant humanoids known as “Titans” appear and devour nearly all of the human race. To protect themselves, giant walls are built to keep Titans out, until a new Titan, taller than the wall, breaks it down and leaves humanity scrambling for survival.

In the midst of this first attack, a young child named Eren Jaeger vows revenge against the entire Titan race and joins up with two of his close friends to learn the ways of Titan-fighting in the hopes of one day joining the Scout Regiment section of the military, dedicated to venturing outside the walls that protects their race and take the fight straight to the Titans.

The storyline of this game covers the entire first season of the anime, but one thing that will make fans interested is that some storyline parts in the game go past the first season’s ending and shows a little insight to a few things that happen afterwards. It’s not to an extensive point, but it’s fun to be able to see new story past just what we’ve already seen in the anime.

Gameplay

This is a fast-paced action game mixed with aerial elements and a bit of strategy in as well. Most people may think this will just be a copy-paste musou like Samurai Warriors or Dynasty Warriors. While some elements from those games are in here, this takes much more from Attack on Titan than it takes from a standardized musou formula. There won’t be massive hordes of enemies and you’ll be flying around stages like Spider-Man, taking out Titans in a very not-musou way.

When you boot up the game, you have a few game modes to go through. Attack Mode takes you through the story, True Attack Mode unlocks after beating the story and is basically NG+ / Hard Mode for the plot, Expedition Mode is for Multiplayer missions (There is no Cross-Play, so Vita can only play with other Vita owners), and then you have Gallery for viewing info and character models, Options for game settings, and Download for accessing DLC once DLC starts to release for the game.

Game progression basically goes between a Camp / Base and actual stages. You always have a camp between missions. In Attack Mode / Story Mode, you’ll automatically switch to the required character for the next story event while in Expedition, you can play as any of the 10 unlockable characters. At the camp, you can buy materials, craft, upgrade, and fortify your weapons and equipment, and buy unlocked Titan models to decorate your camp with. On occasions, you can also talk to NPCs for side quests or character-specific perspectives of missions you’ve already done.

When you’re out in the field you really get the Attack on Titan feel and action. Instead of a standard musou way of movement, you have Omni-Directional Movement gear. If there’s anything near you to grapple against, you can jump into the air, grapple, and fly through the air like Spider-Man around stages. You can also grapple onto enemies if there isn’t anything else around to go in for an attack, but in the busier environments, you will have a lot to grapple to for easy and fast movement.

The physics engine behind all of this is pretty extensive. In some Spider-Man games, you can web-swing anywhere, even if there isn’t anything to cling onto. In Attack on Titan, physics are in play from start to finish. If there’s nothing to grapple onto, you can’t use your Omni Gear. Also, if you’re flying around, attached to an enemy and another enemy runs between you or you get a tree or other object between you, it will hit your cable and cut the connection. KT went the distance to make the physics as realistic as possible to keep you on your toes.

There is also a limitation. You use gas up when you’re using your gear, and you do not have unlimited gas. You have supplies with you to replenish your gas a couple times, but once that’s out, you need to find NPCs around the stages to give you more. Just as Mikasa learned in the anime, wasting gas can be useful or lead you into trouble. But, if this happens, you also have a warhorse in battle with you that you can use to cover distance to recovery supplies.

Now, let’s talk about combat. Every enemy you fight will be a Titan. There are various sizes and some boss-level Titans (fans will know exactly who these are), but every enemy you fight is going to be some sort of Titan. Fighting them will be a matter of grappling to body parts and attacking until you can sever those parts off and finally severing the enemy’s nape to kill them.

At first, you can just go straight for the nape and attack only it until they die and that’s pretty simple. But, to keep things fresh and challenging, the further you get into the game, the more enemies appear that have their nape protected and fortified, resistant to attacks. In order to otake down this shield, you have to sever other limbs off of the Titan. Only then can you do enough damage to be realistic to quickly take them down. This is also to help encourage you to attack other parts, as many limbs will give you rare materials used for equipment crafting and enhancing.

One thing to be wary about with attacking is that you need to be at good angles and with a lot of speed to attack for good amounts of damage. The slower you are or at wrong angles will not only do less damage and give you a chance of being grabbed and eaten, but also do a lot of durability damage to your weapons. Once durability is down so much, your blades will break and you only have so many reserves you can swap out per mission.

More of the strategy comes in the form of different kinds of missions and side-missions. When you go into a mission, you’ll always be attacking Titans, but missions vary. Some missions may have you fighting to defend an outpost, while others may have you escorting NPCs or other characters across Titan-filled environments towards a goal point to make a bombardment or just get them to safety. One mission that I thought was particularly different and interesting was where you had to taunt and make Titans follow you across the map, unable to damage them until the objective was complete.

Side Missions are optional missions, but worth going out of your way to do. In every mission, you will see green smoke flares to signal that someone is in trouble. Rushing across the map to help them will lead you to either fight off Titans that are attacking them or escort them somewhere. The strategy involved here is judging whether you have enough time to leave your current objective, finish the side mission, and get back before something bad happens to your other allies. If successful, most side missions will let you link with a character and they’ll join your party and attack Titans with you.

After doing a lot of these in a mission, you’ll have “Final Subjugation Targets” appear on the map and taking these down will basically end the match and you’ll win. Do note that the defense missions where you’re just keeping Titans away from your base don’t have these. They are more on time limitations and fighting until a timer runs down to zero.

Before going on, let’s talk about the other way of combat. In a few missions, you have Titan Battles. Fans will know what I’m talking about here and I won’t spoil a thing for those that don’t know yet. In these battles, you control Titans instead of humans in combat that feels more closely to 3D brawlers than mindless action games.

Upon winning a battle, you’re awarded with a few things. First, you’re given experience both for your character and your overall rankings. Leveling up rankings will unlock new equipment to be bought and made at your camp, like more powerful weapons, equipment that has bigger gas reserves, or weapons that are more durable.

This all comes together to a point that feels very true to the Attack on Titan mythos. Flying around on Omni gear functions just like it does in the show, all of the Titan models were taken from the Manga and Anime, and every time a boss shows up, it has that heightened difficulty that feels like it does for the characters in the anime, especially in True Attack Mode.

The only thing I will say is that people might expect the game to be repetitive. Although there are a lot of different objectives, you’ll notice that there isn’t much variety in enemy models or environments since they were all taken from the manga and anime and nothing outside of that was made. While that can feel a little repetitive, if you don’t really get into the Omni gear, fighting the same Titans over and over again could start to feel repetitive for you. I would say this is much more apparent once you get past the story and get into Survey Missions and multiplayer than story since there isn’t a lot of story to go along with those missions.

Overall, I would gauge the game’s story mode as a 12-20 hour experience, depending on what difficulty you choose. Easy Mode would be more towards 12 hours, Normal towards 20, and if you choose to do True Attack Mode later on, it’d likely be much longer. I have not completed True Attack yet, since it’s more of a NG+ and I’m more set on working on completing survey missions to unlock more character info in the Gallery.

Controls

First off, PlayStation TV owners will be glad to know that the game is completely compatible with the micro-console and things run just as well here as they do on the go.

Let’s get to controls. You move around with the Left Analog Stick and use the Right Analog Stick to move the camera in free movement and switch locked targets when you’re grappled to an enemy. The D-Pad isn’t used for movement, but more for giving orders to your AI partners. It is also used to cycle your items if you need to use a healing item, replenish gas and blades, or use grenades to stun enemies to give you more time to take them down before your teammate gets eaten.

Regarding the face buttons, X is used for jumping into the air or using up gas to give you a jetpack-like boost across the stage. Square is used to initiate your grapple, either on nearby objects or an enemy you’re locked onto. Triangle is used for attacks, and Circle is used to interact with NPCs to pick up items from dead comrades or getting supplies from Logisticians. Finally, the triggers can be used for locking onto enemies and the touch screen can be tapped to shoot up a signal flare for nearby characters to come and help you.

The controls are pretty self-explanatory with all you go through in the initial tutorials. The game explains everything you’ll be doing rather well so you’re never lost in the heat of a battle

Presentation

Here’s where I’ve seen a lot of PS Vita gamers already in a pessimistic attitude towards the game. The game looks terrible and plays worse, they say. So, what is my take on this? The visual engine certainly isn’t the shining peak of PS Vita graphics capabilities. The visuals look about like other Warriors games do, with being somewhere between PSP graphics and normal PS Vita graphics. In the heat of battle, you won’t notice it too much, but I’d actively compare it to the Vita versions of recent Warriors games, like Samurai Warriors 4 Empires.

There are two things I do want to mention here as being something that can make the experience frustrating. One is something built into all versions of the game and one is specific to the handheld version. First, the camera. The camera is your worst enemy if you’re surrounded by Titans, especially in tight corners. I don’t know how many times I’ve landed a kill, gotten hit and landed on the ground, and tried to move while all the camera showed was a rock wall, leaving me to hope I point the analog stick in the right direction when I evade.

The other is the frame-rate. For the most part, the frame-rate of Attack on Titan stays pretty steady. It’s mostly when you land kills and in heavily crowded areas that things start to drop. If you’ve seen PS4 footage of the game, everything pauses and slows down for a moment when you land a kill. The Vita version does this too, but when you do animated kill scenes, the Vita version’s frame rate drops a fair bit after the kill is done with. This leaves you a little vulnerable if you’re surrounded.

Also, in some crowded areas, the frame rate will drop a fair bit. This was mostly done for me in small crevices where I had 4 or more Titans right on top of me at the same time. You can get out of those situations, but the lower frame rate definitely makes things harder than they should be.

Yet another month is coming to a cloise, and the site continues to go on.  I viewed this month as particularly nice because I hit 400 reviews to date.  I’m pretty proud of that number, personally.  The number of reviews this month is pretty standard as well.  I posted 10 reviews for Vita and 3DS, though I actually wrote closer to 15 reviews total this month.

Those other reviews are for platforms I am not yet ready to reveal.  But, do know that the site will be expanding sometime in Fall 2016 and potentially 2 or 3 times in 2017.  More information on those to come when those expansions actually come.

So, here are the 10 reviews posted for August 2016:

Nintendo 3DS Reviews

Legend of Kusakari
Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night
Super Mario Bros 2
Super Mario Bros 3

PlayStation Vita / PSTV Reviews

Attack on Titan
Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles
Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational
Laser Disco Defenders
MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death
Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate

It was a pretty average month, but content is content and I made my typical “queue” of 10 reviews per month.  Look forward to next month, which I already have several new reviews planned for and for October, when the site will be expanding to a brand new platform!

It’s the time of the month again to wrap things up. With the review recap posted yesterday along with the hints of more site expansion to come, now is when I will give all of you PSTV owners that browse the site a summary of all the games added to the ever-popular PSTV Compatibility List for this month.

It wasn’t a super-big month for the PSTV, but we did get quite a few titles in. Here are all of the games added to the PSTV Compatibility List for August 2016:

Japan

7’Scarlet
Beast and Princess
Geten no Hana with Yume Akari Aizouban
Haitaka no Psychedelica
Hana Oboro: Sengoku Denranki
Kimi no Aogi Otome wa Huma ni
PriministAr
Wand of Fortune II
Yuukyuu no Tierblade: Lost Chronicle

North America

Asterisk War: Phoenix Festa
Attack on Titan
Claire: Extended Cut
God Eater 2: Rage Burst
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X
Lichtspeer

Like I said, not the busiest month. Across both Japan and North America, there have been 15 new games added to the list. Certainly not what I want, but hey, that’s still an average of 1 game every 2 days, so I’ll take it. Stay tuned for more updates on the list, as I’m always searching for new info.