Category: Articles

Articles about game design, games journalism, the games industry or maybe just games. Chill takes over hot takes, every time.

Hyperdimension Neptunia vs Sega Hard Girls Import Impressions

Recently I imported the latest Neptunia side game, called Super Dimension War Neptunia VS Sega Hard Girls Dream of Coalescence Special AKA Cho Jigen Taisen Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls Yume no Gattai Special AKA 超次元大戦 ネプテューヌVSセガハードガールズ 夢の合体スペシャル

AKA We’re just calling it Neptunia vs Sega Hard Girls okay. I’ve been enjoying it and thought I’d write up a post about the highs and lows so far.

If you’re interested in watching gameplay, I have 6 hours of video from livestreams on my Youtube channel, you can find the first Neptunia vs Sega Hard Girls stream here and the second livestream archive here. That should give you a pretty clear look at the start of the game. I’m also working on a guide for the game I’ll publish soon.

As this is an “import impressions” post, note that I have not fully completed the game (I have played about 10 hours and I would approximate possibly half the game) and I may not properly understand all aspects of the game as it is in Japanese. I do not speak Japanese so I play these games via a combination of Google Translate, trial and error, dumb luck and Determination. If I say something is missing it’s possible I just haven’t seen it, and I may miss otherwise obvious hints in UI text/etc that would have prevented me from making certain mistakes.

Also note the game released last week in Japan–there’s a possibility there will be some patches. Neptunia Victory II actually got quite a few patches to address issues and improve a few things.

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What I use to record Let’s Play videos and Livestreams

I get asked what tools I while recording use a lot, so I thought I’d toss it all into a nice detailed page to point to. Here you’ll find all the software, hardware and what not I record or livestream with, all of which I personally recommend.

I don’t have any special training, so why some of these tools may not be the absolute best in the biz, they work, they’re easy enough for an untrained spikeball to use and they’re either reasonably priced or free.

I’ll update this whenever new software enters my permanent rotation. Yes Amazon links in this post may be affiliate links. No you do not pay more by visiting an affiliate link.

Last updated 2017-1-30.

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An Objective Undertale Review

(There are some very vague, very technical, very Objective™ spoilers for Undertale below. You probably won’t get the joke if you haven’t beaten Undertale at least once anyway.)

Undertale is a 122.52 MB single player game with “partial” controller support described as an “RPG Game”. The game is rendered at 640×480 pixels like a 30 year old CRT television though almost all ingame art is actually made at a resolution well below 480p. Most enemies are black and white in combat with extremely limited animation. The color pallette is similarly limited, probably 32 colors or less on most screens. The game only uses three buttons and arrow keys.

An objective sample of Undertale's art.
An objective sample of Undertale’s art.

The game has three endings. Two endings can be achieved at level 1, while the other ending requires more time grinding than playing the game. The “hardest” boss in the entire game has only 1 HP and their attacks can only deal 1 HP in return. The strongest equipment in the game is literally useless. Several fights cannot be lost.

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Getting in Gear

I’ve been trying to figure out just what I’m doing with my channel/website/content in general for a while now, and I’ve finally settled on a few things I think I can make work. The last couple weeks I’ve been working on a lot of that and trying to streamline some processes, and I hope it’s starting to show.

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Steam Controller First Impressions

I got one of the first batch of Steam Controllers this Friday and I’ve had an…Interesting™ time with it. I played it with 17 games of various genres to try it out and I’ve got a lot of things to say about it, at the least. You can find my specific experiences with the games at the bottom after the conclusion.

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“Complaining on the internet” works. #DealWithIt

A common reaction to basically any complaint on the internet, but especially in gaming, is “no one cares”. No company is going to change their minds because you complain on twitter, so they say, because after all who cares about one person?

Well, this common knowledge has turned out to be very clearly false. Since just 2013 a myriad of major changes in gaming have occurred due to “internet” outcry. (it’s important to remember that “internet” doesn’t actually make a thing less real, every complaint is from a real, flesh and bone, meat and organ human being.)

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Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer Mini-Review

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you might not know I’m a pretty huge Animal Crossing fan. Being able to design my home is pretty much the main driving force behind most of my actions in Animal Crossing, so I was quite excited to see them break out a whole game around designing homes.

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer has gotten a lot of “who asked for this” replies from the peanut gallery but I’ve always been pretty excited and I was very relieved to find out that yes, it’s pretty darn fun!

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Backwards compatibility in the digital age

Backwards compatibility has had a weird history. The PS2 is probably the first “major” device to offer it, mostly being a thing sported by minor revisions of specific PC/console gaming systems like the PC Engine (and generally PC games have BC though each Windows version jump is a bit of a question mark).

Since Backwards Compatibility never really became a 100% expected feature of consoles, a lot of “no one even uses that” talk came out when it was announced the PS4 and Xbox One would completely lack any form of Backwards Compatibility–and in Sony/MS’s defense, the architecture mismatch is a pretty big deal so it’s not quite a minor deal. Continue reading “Backwards compatibility in the digital age”

Niche games and useless reviews

I encountered the following statement regarding Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture:

“Totally see myself rating this a 6 out of 10 for the site. I’m just completely bored with the mechanics in this game.”

If you’re unfamiliar, Rapture is a “walking simulator”, the only “mechanics” are move, look, a very slow run button and an “interact” button (actually, every button interacts). It’s not my intent to explain the appeal of walking sim games here, but suffice it to say if you were looking into this game hoping for Deep Mechanics you have absolutely no idea what this type of game is. Continue reading “Niche games and useless reviews”