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The X Button - Due Recognition


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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 12:27 pm Reply with quote
Hopefully I'll have Gundam Breaker 2 before Christmas, the game is looking to be an even better experience than the first Gundam Breaker. 2015 shows a great deal of promise for Eastern gaming with The Legend of Legacy, Etrian Odyssey Mystery Dungeon, the new Saga title for the Vita, Kancolle Kai, Senran Kagura Estival Versus and Bravely Second.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2518
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 12:53 pm Reply with quote
I take it Todd's not a big fan of the SaGa series, considering the amount of snark in that write-up of the new game announcements. Well, aside from the original three Game Boy games, I guess. Personally, the only SaGa games I've played have been the PS2 remake of Romancing SaGa, which I enjoyed but never got far in (my friend absolutely loved it, though), & Unlimited SaGa, which I absolutely loved & is one of my favorite RPGs of all time (*cue shock & awe as people realize I'm a freak of nature who likes a game most people hated*... Seriously, though, am I bizarre for having no real problems playing the game? Even the Reel System complaints were mostly exaggerated in the end). I have since bought SaGa Frontier 1 & 2, though, and I will get to them eventually as I've heard great praise given to both; Todd's the very rare person I've read to actually put them down. It is a shame that the DS remakes of SaGa 2 & 3 never came over, however, because I would have loved playing them. Akitoshi Kawazu is one of my absolute favorite game designers, mainly because of his penchant to experiment at all times & try new (or at least different) things out. Whenever I see a game is helmed by him I can be guaranteed that it's going to be different from anything out there.

As for that Lufia Kickstarter, it didn't matter how good it originally looked or promised to be, as it likely was going to be made without permission from Taito/Square-Enix, so it would have been shut down regardless.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14744
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 1:43 pm Reply with quote
Murder, She wrote:

And Illusion of Gaia for the Super NES. I played it this year, so it counts.


Oh hey, I just played The 7th Saga, so that counts. Laughing

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Fronzel



Joined: 11 Sep 2003
Posts: 1906
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 2:52 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
This year brought about a lot of bickering over small and strange things. The greatest was Gamergate, a movement seemingly fomented over complaints of “social justice warriors” controlling game journalism and colluding with developers. Gamergate was absurd and poorly substantiated when broken down to its base elements, but it was also serious: people were harassed, other people lost jobs, and companies pulled ads from websites (and, when it came to Intel, put them back). And it's still going on in some capacity.

Fair And BalancedTM
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4342
Location: New York
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 2:55 pm Reply with quote
Can we all agree the Lucky Chole thing was silly? The game will hit and we'll all have a good laugh, then play with the best Tekken character, Yoshimitsu.
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Shippoyasha



Joined: 28 Aug 2007
Posts: 459
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 3:00 pm Reply with quote
Oh goodness that ridiculous Tekken drama. I hope that Harada was just joking there. There's so much variety in Tekken, there's no need to take such a harsh stance against one disagreeable character. I'm sure not everyone will like every single character in the roster.
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Stuart Smith



Joined: 13 Jan 2013
Posts: 1298
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 5:38 pm Reply with quote
This is the first time I've heard of the Lufia Kickstarter, but I'm not sure how Kickstarter even allowed a copyright infringing project in the first place. Not that it would have been a good game anyway, I imagine. All these fan sequels of games either get C&D or just fade away until they disappear entirely. In the rare case they get released, they're usually pretty bad.

I'd rather just keep with the Lufia games we already have. Unlike some people I didn't have much issue with the DS remake of 2, though I'd have prefer if it was a traditional RPG rather than an action game.

Fronzel wrote:
Fair And BalancedTM


To add onto this, I don't think you can lump GamerGate in with something as trivial as the Lucky Chloe thing. Unlike your average whiny internet fanboy who decides to make Change.org petitions on issues like making Sonic's arms blue and not beige or they're adding a female to Tekken, GamerGate actually accomplished things and started a discussion.

It is interesting how it's still going onto this day, though. TotalBiscuit won an award at that game award show a few weeks ago and Twitter and Tumblr exploded in rage because he spoke out in favor of GG and they're still trying to hang him for it and denounce the award show. Personally I found it more odd how the CEOs of Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, and other publishing companies were on the advisory board which raises certain flags, but it's not as if the awards actually matter at the end of the day.

-Stuart Smith
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krelyan



Joined: 30 Mar 2005
Posts: 173
Location: Utah
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 6:16 pm Reply with quote
Stuart Smith wrote:
It is interesting how it's still going onto this day, though. TotalBiscuit won an award at that game award show a few weeks ago and Twitter and Tumblr exploded in rage because he spoke out in favor of GG and they're still trying to hang him for it and denounce the award show. Personally I found it more odd how the CEOs of Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, and other publishing companies were on the advisory board which raises certain flags, but it's not as if the awards actually matter at the end of the day.


Not sure what you're trying to insinuate at but that "Trending Gamer" award was a fan-voted category. Whomever was on any of the committees is irrelevant.
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Stuart Smith



Joined: 13 Jan 2013
Posts: 1298
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 7:22 pm Reply with quote
krelyan wrote:
Not sure what you're trying to insinuate at but that "Trending Gamer" award was a fan-voted category. Whomever was on any of the committees is irrelevant.


I was speaking in general reasons to be upset with an awards show. Having people who made the games getting awards on the committee seems far more problematic than a YouTuber getting an award to me.

-Stuart Smith
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krelyan



Joined: 30 Mar 2005
Posts: 173
Location: Utah
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 7:38 pm Reply with quote
Stuart Smith wrote:
krelyan wrote:
Not sure what you're trying to insinuate at but that "Trending Gamer" award was a fan-voted category. Whomever was on any of the committees is irrelevant.


I was speaking in general reasons to be upset with an awards show. Having people who made the games getting awards on the committee seems far more problematic than a YouTuber getting an award to me.

-Stuart Smith


Only if you're completely unaware of how producing an awards show (or any television programming) that has advertising works. Please point out the CEOs who had anything to do with the voting process.
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 10:13 pm Reply with quote
SaGa series

SaGa Frontier was fantastic. When I first rented it, I knew it was a different breed of RPG and definitely more fun than the standard setup I was used to at the time. Asellus, as everyone who is a fan knows, had the best story among the cast and it sucks so much of her story was compromised in the final release because her "final decision" made a lot less sense without all those experiences she was planned to have prior. Heck, there's a lot of unused stuff in Frontier. A shame a lot of it was discarded.

SaGa Frontier 2 was certainly the most unique in that it was the first and only linear entry in the series. It definitely had its difficulty in spades, not to mention the U.S. version was made much harder than the Japanese version upon release for some reason. The Egg's Star Quake in the final battle, for example, didn't originally subtract LP when it hit. We added that feature for our release. As for the entirety of the game, we increased the basic damage the monsters did to the characters, even when they were well-armored. I also must give a lot of points to the split perspective story, as it was one of the better written JRPGs of its time.

Unlimited Saga (the only SaGa game not to capitalize the G for some reason) was where the dividing line was drawn for a lot of folks, and like what Dragon Quarter did for the Breath of Fire fans, it earned more scowls than smiles. I must admit it was a bit jarring getting used to the different setup of things, but after a bit of experimenting, I got the hang of it, as did a friend of mine who managed to crush the final boss in Laura's story (unlike my sorry ass, though I came pretty close with Ventus's). Sure the game had the usual trappings, like LP and sparking arts, but the Monopoly-style game board thing + required extra skills to progress was off-putting at times. While I did go with the flow, the random encounter rate was a bit too high at times and often threw enemies at me when I wanted to just get to the end of the damn route and finish the segment. On the other hand, I did love the various races living in that world, especially the Anubito, which was a calling back to earlier SaGas that had different races to choose from. And the weapon arts were deliciously animated.

Minstrel Song was a keeper. Too bad it didn't make a significant splash here. A real shame too, since it was a lot of fun, had a more improved set of internal stories from its original version on Super Famicom and the biggest challenge highlight at the time was fighting 10 Destiny Stones Saruin, of which a lot of videos were made in both Japan and the U.S.

Sure SaGa games have steep learning curves in battle and fully outfitting your team takes some time, but once you master those two key points, the real fun comes from finding tasks for your party to undertake once they're ready to go. And let's not forget Kenji Ito and Masashi Hamauzu's amazing musical contributions to the games.

Quote:
Might SaGa just be a niche over here?


After everything has been said and done, we SaGa fans have come to accept that it is indeed a niche series. It just never earned the accolades and praise that Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and so many other long running series have. I guess the average gamer is just afraid of RPGs being too different (which is odd since most people complain the genre needs more difficulty and SaGa delivers on that front). I really hope we can get this upcoming SaGa 2015, and even Imperial SaGa. It would be nice to play a game where I get to team up characters from multiple SaGa worlds. One can dream at least.

Best Kickstarter Disaster: Laughable "effort" really. A real fan would have made a solid attempt at least, and not photoshopped a Lufia character into official artwork from another franchise. That just looks like something a teenage fanboy would do to troll others; my guess is he was just being really stupid and overeager.

Quote:
Besides, he likes the underrated Lufia DS game. He has potential.


Can't say I agree with you, Todd. Curse of the Sinistrals was not done very well at all. Sorry, I'm not trying to be spiteful here, but all I can say is CotS was a terrible re-imagining of Lufia II and sucked the charm right out of the original SNES game. The new character designs were terrible as hell too (Tia's weepy girl personality may have gotten an improvement, but she looked absolutely ridiculous otherwise).

Speaking of all this Lufia talk, are they planning on eventually releasing the first entry on Wii U's VC shop since they failed to deliver on that promise for the Wii a few years ago?

Runner-Ups:

Quote:
And Illusion of Gaia for the Super NES. I played it this year, so it counts.


I wonder why they haven't bothered releasing this on VC yet. It's the one game from the Heaven and Earth trilogy most people remember fondly over here. I was hoping they would have put it up for the Wii years ago, but no dice.
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gloverrandal



Joined: 20 May 2014
Posts: 406
Location: Oita
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 10:41 pm Reply with quote
Shippoyasha wrote:
Oh goodness that ridiculous Tekken drama. I hope that Harada was just joking there. There's so much variety in Tekken, there's no need to take such a harsh stance against one disagreeable character. I'm sure not everyone will like every single character in the roster.


That's how Harada generally is. It's safe to say he was just making fun of western gamers not liking to play as female character with that and she'll be in the game as normal. He's a very outspoken man.

Drakengard 3 was a fun game, but I think my game of the year would be Bayonetta 2. It's a real beautiful and fun game than embraces it's own creativity. It's hard for me compare different genres but as far as RPGs go I loved Bravely Default, Lightning Returns, and Persona Q this year as well. Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros are also obviously really good. But if I had award anything for creativity and imagination it would be Bayonetta 2.
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Rahxephon91



Joined: 08 Jun 2003
Posts: 1859
Location: Park Forest IL.
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 10:49 pm Reply with quote
Western gamers don't like to play female characters in fighting games?

Sounds like someone who dosen't actually play fighting games. You've said this before and it was unfounded then. Please stop spinning the argument to better suit your uninformed views.

If that was the point of his joke, he's pretty wrong.

No western gamers don't care for the overly cute moe stuff and thats why people did'nt like her poorly designed character. Especially for a series that use to be top tier in character design.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 11:40 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
I was set to tell people to grab After Burner Climax right now if they want it, because Sega's gorgeous jet shooter was scheduled to vanish from the PLAYSTATION Network and XBox Live on December 24. I say “was” because the game disappeared just this Tuesday, well ahead of schedule.

Where does this leave you if you want After Burner Climax? If you already bought it and just want to download it again, you're fine. Those who never bought it can try nabbing the game from Europe's PLAYSTATION Network (which needs an Euro PSN account, of course), but it may already be gone by the time this column goes up. And if you just want to try the game, there's always the arcade version or the scaled-down smartphone releases. At this writing, the Android and iOS editions of After Burner Climax are still available.

Or you could fire up Shenmue and head to its virtual arcade for the original After Burner.


Or you can go searching for the arcade machine itself. Within 15 miles of where I live, I've already found two of them--one in a bowling alley and one in a movie theater--so I'd bet they're fairly common.

Shippoyasha wrote:
Oh goodness that ridiculous Tekken drama. I hope that Harada was just joking there. There's so much variety in Tekken, there's no need to take such a harsh stance against one disagreeable character. I'm sure not everyone will like every single character in the roster.


I have no clue why there's such a fuss over Lucky Chloe. She doesn't seem remarkably controversial, so I can only guess it comes from the nature of the Tekken fanbase, one I don't know much about.

belvadeer wrote:
Best Kickstarter Disaster: Laughable "effort" really. A real fan would have made a solid attempt at least, and not photoshopped a Lufia character into official artwork from another franchise. That just looks like something a teenage fanboy would do to troll others; my guess is he was just being really stupid and overeager.


If guys like Christian Weston Chandler can reach their 30s and think they can make their own game better than the originals withou having to go through any legal channels, then there's a chance this one is legit.
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Monster in a box



Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Posts: 671
PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 12:20 am Reply with quote
First off, Afterburner isn't in Shenmue, it's in Shenmue II. Second, it's not even in Shenmue II, that's Afterburner II. Third, CRAP, why did I put off getting it, I'm so stupid. I got Outrun in time, which is more important, but still...irritating.

[edit] it's not appearing on the 360 store, but the DEMO is appearing in the browser version of the store. I'm downloading it to my 360 now via that method, and MAYBE the 'buy full game" option will still work. (there's almost always one of those in these demos...)

[edit2] Nope, when you click on unlock game, the only option is 'cancel'. What a load.
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