Gracefully Stepping Aside

In the past, David and I have shared the various ways in which a game ends up on the backlog.  Often, it starts with a good game that we put down and just happen to never get back around to.  Sometimes, it's a game that ends up frustrating you so badly after a boss fight or random encounter that you don't want to look at it again for the indefinite future, and, unlike Devil Summoner 2, doesn't have a bitchin' enough soundtrack to keep you coming back for more.

Unfortunate for my pride, but fortunate for my eardrums!

And of course, with no shortage of good games having come out in the past few years, it's easy to push aside a respectable game in interests of another, never to get back to it.  All of this is, of course, ignoring the everyday factors of life such as work, school, family, or other obligations.

What we haven't discussed at length, is this rare case:  Occasionally, a game gets put on the backlog because it's just too good.  You're scared to let it consume you because you know that after finishing it, it will be hard to find another game in your stack that measures up to it.  Enter Tales of Graces f.  While I have no shortage of excellent games from the Tales series, Graces, which sports one of the best combat systems in the series, has (at least early on), fairly likable characters, and is a rare case of us getting a "final mix" of a games distinguishes it as one of the better games in the series.

Unfortunately, it also risks diminishing the experience of the other Tales games I have.

Death is No Escape: Demon's Souls

There's a long-standing tradition in games that you only get a certain number of chances to fulfill your objective before having to either use a continue (and lose much progress) or start over entirely if you run out of those, too. While this conceit has fallen to the wayside in recent years, games up to and including the PS2-era followed the construct of only allowing a player a certain number of lives, and when the counter hit zero that was it, you had to start the game from the beginning. The advent of automatic save points in every game pushed this aside, to the relief of many a long-time gamer tired of losing all their progress to one super-difficult point. If there was one boon to this system, it was that as your remaining lives ticked lower, you became increasingly cautious and careful, and maybe played the game a little better than you would have otherwise.

When they made Demon's Souls, Atlus decided they'd had quite enough of that bullshit. From now on, if you die, the game gets harder.

"What is that, happiness? That won't do."

Demon's Souls is a game that punishes you for being bad at it. It punishes you for being mediocre at it. If you're good enough to actually make it to a boss, it punishes you for that, too. I've played games that were hard. I've played games where the designers clearly wanted to push you and make you a better player. It's not accurate to say Demon's Souls has a steep learning curve. Demon's Souls is the Chinese-facing side of K2. This game straight up does not want you to win and will do what it has to so as to ensure you lose.

That's not even getting into New Game+.

As you might imagine, this one has been on my Backlog for awhile, and not because I bought it and forgot about it. It's because in any one sitting, I can only take so much humiliating death before the hope is ground out of me and distilled into the fine humors from which Demon's Souls extracts its nutrients. The makers of this game looked at the average number of deaths in Aztec rituals honoring Quetzacoatl and said, "Well there's our baseline." The people who thought up Demon's Souls have less remorse than John Wayne Gacy on mescaline, and are exactly as excited about killing you.

So over the last couple years since its release, I've made several serious efforts at Atlus's opus to difficulty, and each time I've made it just a little bit further, yet have been unable to reach the final boss. As it stands right now, I'm at a point where I've got three stages left uncleared, and if I can conquer them I'll finally have a shot at beating the whole game. Unfortunately, I've hit another bump as I keep dying at the exact same spot over and over again every time. While I deal with that, I figured now would be a pretty good time to examine how I got this far to begin with.

A Lackluster Third Act - Ar Tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel

 As I mentioned in a previous post about Atelier Rorona, I have a love-hate relationship with games developed by Gust.  When it comes to Ar Tonelico games, however, there's mostly love.  It's funny, really, because these were the last sort of games I expected to ever like.  For those unfamiliar with them, think of them as what you get when you cross an Atelier game with a dating sim with a turn-based RPG.

Sounds like a crazy combination, right?  What's even crazier is that it works.  Or at least, it did until Ar Tonelico Qoga:  Knell of Ar Ciel came along.  When you look across the Ar Tonelico games, the first entry, Melody of Elemia distinguished itself as simplistic, yet quirky and interesting enough to sustain one's attention.  The second game, Melody of Metafalica, in short, improved on just about everything from the first game (except for quirks in the localization process..).

Unfortunately, rather than further refining what made the series likable, ATQ takes a number of steps back, showing a far inferior combat system, less interesting characters, and a less robust crafting system.  While at the core, it still has many of the things that characterize an Ar Tonelico game, it is a sadly lackluster ending to a series that showed great promise.

So what happened with the third game?  You'd think that the potential of the PS3 would allow for a game of even greater magnitude.  Did trying to be more poetic by using "qoga" and "knell" in lieu of the numbered entry and usual subtitle change up things that much for the worse?

Well, you'd be surprised. . .

Not so metal Alchemist

I have a love-hate relationship with games developed by Gust.

I hate that often, there's an annoying glitch, bug, or just poor quality control which, in the best case, serves as a minor annoyance, and in other cases, is absolutely gamebreaking: And not the type that works in your favor.  Yet, many times, there are things that I love about them which allow me to overlook these flaws:  They're (usually) aesthetically pleasing (if not in terms of sprites, than the lush background).  They have a number of interesting gameplay mechanics going for them.  Perhaps most importantly, however, they usually end up being the sort of games that you can sit down, veg out to, and play casually through -- at least in an initial playthrough, as long as you're not trying to be a super completionist.

Enter Atelier Rorona.  Like a few other Gust games in the past, this game suffers from random freezing, which can destroy hours of progress if you haven't been diligent in saving.  On the flipside, it is one of the most gorgeous games produced on the PS3.  For me, however, the beauty of Atelier Rorona wasn't in pure aesthetics, but it's relative simplicity:  Something much needed at a time of year when things get hectic for me at work.

A Delayed Acquisition

How I acquired this game is a funny story.  Originally, when it was first released, I happened to chance upon it at one of Gamestop's ever-frequent (though they'll try to convince you that they're not that frequent) Buy 2, Get 1 free used game sales.  In a previous piece, I lamented how there were very few PS3 exclusives that justified my purchase of the system:  Something that, to this day, I, as well as others, I'm sure, still struggle with, as we hope for the release of some game that makes us happy to own this iteration of Sony's console:

Not that we're pointing any fingers.

So when I came across this game, I was somewhat relieved, yet still not fully convinced that I wanted to purchase the game (even used, it was still $45 bucks).  Fortunately, someone made that decision easy for me:  The guy who snatched up the game after I had put it back while I debated a bit too long on my decision.

Pretty sure it was this guy.

It was for the best, as by the time I finally got around to purchasing it, it had dropped to $26 or so.  Patience is a virtue after all.  But enough of my acquisition story:  You're probably curious about the game itself.

The Worst Ninjas You'll Ever Meet

 
I mentioned a few months ago that one of my bridge games of choice was Naruto Shippuden:  Ultimate Ninja Storm 2.  I've since finished the game, twice over:  Once while attempting to unlock everything so I could transfer things over to the Enabler's PS3, and another time when we both discovered that UNS2 was one of those rare selections that doesn't allow for inter-PS3 transfers (thanks, jackasses).

Although it was a frustrating process to go through again in some ways, a few good things came of this.  For one, it allowed the Enabler, who hadn't seen much of the Naruto: Shippuden anime to get an abridged version of the first 120 episodes in under a few hours.  It allowed me to become slightly more proficient at the game.  But most importantly, it spurred an important conversation point between us where we agreed on one point, which ultimately changed the focus of this point merely from a comparison of two Naruto games, to this:

With very few exceptions, the ninjas in Naruto are the worst ninjas you'll ever meet.  Due to its masterful presentation, Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 unintentionally does a great job of highlighting this. 

The Soulless Machine.

Earlier today, David and I had a conversation.  Since he's too busy to draw anything and my artwork sucks, here's the conversation:

David 9:38 pm
I feel bad for not writing anything in so long.

 Ayn 9:39 pm
You're Jewish, not Catholic.  Get over it.

 David 9:39 pm
You're right.  Jews get guilt from other people, not ourselves.
Primarily mothers.

 Ayn 9:40 pm
I really feel like most PS3 RPGs lack..
Soul.

 David 9:40 pm
Yeah.
You can only get that from handhelds these days.

 Ayn 9:40 pm
See, I've had some 360 RPGs that have that.
Arc Rise Fantasia had it, too.
Baiten Katos as well.

 David 9:41 pm
I still haven't played that.
Though I did finally find a copy of Tales of Symphonia.

 Ayn 9:41 pm
In some weird, twisted fucking way, even Unlimited SaGa has it.
The devoured, corrupted, twisted souls of child soldiers, anyway.

 David 9:41 pm
Probably because it drains your own.

 Do you share the same sentiment?  Have a hard time getting into your PS3 games?  Let us know in the comments section.

Bayonetta - With Practice, Pure Poetry

Generally speaking I am not a fighting game fan. I can certainly see the appeal, the memorization of button sequences or combos that eventually become reflex, and turn combat from a button mashing affair into something that is almost poetic when played at its full potential. For me, the whole idea of learning move sets is akin to learning a foreign language, as something I'm interested in but find altogether too daunting. One could argue that the "stylish action" games are essentially fighting games in a 3D space, with games like Devil May Cry having just as much complexity as Tekken or Street Fighter.

So it came as no surprise that I let Bayonetta's release pass unmarked. From the previews and articles leading up to the game's release it was clear that this was going to be just another skill-based stylish action game, as the game was marketing towards the DMC set as the next big thing. Sure, the videos looked amazing and the combos were incredible to watch in preview videos, but the thought of what I would have to do to reach that level of expertise loomed too great in my mind, and I moved on to other things.

Sometime this summer Gamefly had a sale on used games, offering a number of titles for less than 20 bucks. I saw Bayonetta for $15 smackeroos (and Bioshock 2 for $17!) and decided to give it a whirl. I knew it was going to be good, but I was apprehensive about whether or not I'd be able to get through it, or it was destined to sit atop my piles of unfinished games as another title that I enjoyed but couldn't bring myself to finish.

Around 7 days later I had around 30 hours in Bayonetta and a newfound appreciation for the genre. Bayonetta is, simply put, an incredible action game that does so many things right that it's easy to overlook its faults. As a general rule I don't like to spend full price on new games but I am sorry that I waited as long as I did to play it, and now that I have I am almost afraid to play other games in the genre in fear that they may not measure up.