PS4 Respite Glitches

While I'm not aiming to coin a new term here, it's a common enough occurrence that after years of the very interesting events that happened in-game, I kinda gave it a name and stubbornly stuck to it.

Respite glitching. In almost every occurrence, the phenomenon happens on action RPG type games (Skyrim, Dragon Age Inquisition, Assassin's Creed-- so not just itty-bitty unknowns of gaming) after repeatedly going into rest mode and waking the game again. Because the games all share epic possible game times in common, they were also more likely to be my focus for months at a time, but I think frequency seems to accelerate the issue more than time spent gaming. I imagine that something occurs, something residual in the game data, a sort of faulty bookmark that builds up and affects the game itself. Also because the fix involves simply closing out of the game's app entirely from the menu and simply loading the game again, it makes it clear that it's not an error in the game's coding but a little imp in the console's software itself.

I actually enjoy these random surprises. In Skyrim, I like the third person view where I see my character's body. When one respite glitch occurred, I would go through a door in a dungeon and my avatar wasn't there. I'd hear an odd jumbling of distant shuffling noises as I walked and eventually, I'd find my horrifically marionette-like avatar scrambling to glue itself back where it should be.

In Dragon Age Inquisition, the audio would cut out at first but if I let it go, the subtitles would eventually abandon ship too. I have quite a few little shared glitch videos from this game but this was the only one I could absolutely link to the respite glitch since respite glitches tend to creep up and get progressively worse if not wiped. I believe it also had a weird effect on the appearance of magic spells, pixelating or animating poorly.

Final Fantasy XV's magic spells were also affected in this way, but don't get me started on the shitty taste that game's shoddy story left in my mouth.

Either because I know so few people that push a game into rest mode as much as I do or most people I know constantly switch games, researching it didn't actually turn up anything particularly enlightening. It doesn't hurt the games or break them. Every time I notice the issue, there's plenty of functionality to save the game then close out to reload a perfectly functioning game. Sometimes, I go ahead and watch the issue get worse, like a snowball picking up the momentum of an avalanche, out of sheer curiosity.

I'd truly love to hear more stories from people that experience their own respite glitches. Which game and what happened? Let me know!

Secret of Mana PS4 Remaster Review

After deciding those fucking flan challenges on Kingdom Hearts 3 were not worth getting the last Keyblade or Platinum, I hopped over to an oldie but goodie: Samurai Warriors 4. Also never platinumed, but damned if I care about some of these redundant requirements they put on trophies. 

It's not a new game I was looking at next. I first played Secret of Mana on the Super Nintendo in my preteen years. It's one of the games that bonded me to one of my best friends nearly 25 years ago. We beat it many times over, at that, so while I knew going in that nostalgia was a thick rosy fog on this choice, it's only been about 15 years since I last played the original.

So how does it compare?

The music- I'm glad that it's still... kind of the same. In truth, they really could have just left it alone. I still consider the original a soundtrack masterpiece. I'm not sure what they were thinking, but the remastered music lacked all of the original emotion and was even annoying or distracting at times. I would start humming along and then some odd little noise garbage would ruin it for me.

The battles- I feel like this game was likely handed to new hires here. The original battle system had its issues but somehow they made it worse. There's this funky delay after a blow is landed and subsequent blows are piled on. You can also be nose to nose with an enemy and miss completely. For that matter, a programmed missed blow occurs often enough that the characters seem ridiculously inept. The healing delay is frustrating as well, with enemies easily killing off your character who is unable to move during the healing animation while the enemies have full reign to fuck you up. That being said, the boss strategies are still inventive as ever, even with the setbacks.

The voices- I tried them in both English and Japanese and I sincerely wish there were none, like the original. It could be experience saying this, but the dialogue feels a lot cheesier than I remember too.

The animation- I wanted to like the characters zooming in to animate during dialogue but it's some of the laziest animation I've ever seen. The mouths don't move. At all. The characters line up like a grade school play and don't do that much moving either.

The backgrounds- this is one area that was actually an improvement. The environments are beautiful, brighter and smoother. The only gripe I could pose here is that I feel more boxed in by the invisible walls here. It's like a glorified labyrinth, although that's an overstatement since this isn't a game where  you ever get stuck (at least in and of itself) because the maps are pretty simple.

The characters- adding this for those new to the game, but don't expect really deep characters here. the hero is a bumbling young man who stumbles on a legendary sword. You learn he was adopted by the village elder but little else. The ponytail wielding blond is... I don't know, the advisor to the king's daughter so some sort of nobility. She's headstrong and in love with a common though prestigious soldier and her dad convinces the king to send her lover on a doomed mission in the hopes this somehow ever works to convince a girl to marry some asshole he picked for her. Instead, she tells her dad to get bent and unofficially recruits our hero to help her. I went several years without realizing the third character is a boy. It's a Sprite that apparently lost its memory but isn't above conning people. You do find out what happened to them, just like the blond catches up to her lover and the hero... I don't know, just kind of does hero things because heroes do that. Even though I adored the game as a kid, it's mostly because the designs are fun, the music was great and the themes were interesting. The characters are just okay.

DRAGONS!- Flammie is a dragon that helps you. Not getting nearly enough screen time and, like most dragons, is pretty much a sentient vehicle that can fly where nothing else can reach. Still, very exciting to a 12 year old. 

Overall? I hate to say this but you're better off just playing the original. I'll play through this one, but I can't help but find it falls short of the original. The only real benefit is the graphics upgrade and it's just not enough to recommend it. Don't pay more than 10-20 bucks for this one either way.

Honestly, I wish they'd do a quality remake of Final Fantasy 6. They've tried to port it and dress it up half-assed many times over but it would be an absolute masterpiece if they gave it an Advent Children makeover. The amount of storytelling that went into even side stories as well as the skin-crawlingly absurd evil jester Kefka made it so. I dream about what the soap opera house bundle of emotions and humor would be with every facial expression captured. Undoubtedly, that's a game that, even with time, never fails to toss me around. Though Umaro and Gogo were tossed in as last minute characters, I imagine they could add more dimension there as well. Especially since the tale of Gilgamesh, Gogo's alter ego, is so ripe for a wild side story.

Kingdom Hearts 3: Review

Even though I never got into any of the Kingdom Hearts game outside of the console entries, I, like many other fans in the same boat, attempted to straggle off to YouTube to make sense of all the convolutions that took place prior to the third console game.

Although I'm a great lover of storytelling, I find that I just don't care about the large cast of characters plaguing this one. What started as a light-hearted story with a nice touch of darkness just isn't engaging. It's not a game that grew up with fans of my generation. The Disney-esque dialogue, while charming in the first two, was absolutely tedious in this one and after a while, I found myself skipping the slow-paced though gorgeous cut scenes because... I just don't give a fuck about the story. They repeat the concepts of sleeping and waking, of hearts and lack thereof, of replicas and heartless and nobodies and Organizations... To the point where I didn't care to keep up. Sora has two or three other people squatting rent-free in his heart. We've got the Sora/Roxas/Ventus deal with Riku being the playground of the Names villains that span time and don't fucking die, then Kairi is training by sitting on logs and pining over Naminé and Sora while Axel broods over being reduced to a boring side character. I can't bring myself to care about Ventus, Terra and Aqua, who are more palette swapped originals. Vanitas is probably the most interesting. Also, the fucking black box deal. Just don't care.

I'm a fan of complex fantasies, but this is just in the same vein as Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball when a climax of power and realization is erased by losing memories and another new bad guy. Complexity is moot if you just don't care about any of the characters. So in terms of dialogue and story, this game fails for me. I skip those cutscenes, those many, many cutscenes more often than I watch them.

However...

The battle system and gameplay itself is stellar. While the chains can stutter at times and Sora doesn't always respond right away to my button mashing, the transitions between the myriad abilities are beautiful and I find the button presses to be more engaging and rewarding. I love the minigames and the seek style missions. The Classic Kingdom game section is a fun distraction even. What the game lacks in engaging me with the cutscenes, it really makes up for in actual gameplay. I love the mazes and the rewards for being curious. Like Final Fantasy XV, I find that the beauty and play style distracts from what I'm not getting from the story.

Again, I find games like Witcher 3 and Skyrim are just more appealing. Humor is great, but I find that certain entertainment pulls it off with more sincerity and skill. Japanese writing used to deliver that for me but nowadays, I'm finding more effective writing elsewhere. I also find I've developed a preference for effective meshing of gameplay and story. Uncharted is a series that has a way of making me feel as if I'm more involved, even when the cinematics take over. I don't play games to be held hostage in cutscenes so I appreciate it when writers understand the strengths of interactive media and make it worthwhile.

Going back to KH, I still find the world designs charming in this one. I love the whimsical ship battles even though swimming and flying the Gummy Ship somehow got worse over time. I also find Sora doesn't always redirect well during a chain where he finishes off an enemy and ends up swatting at the air rather than soft locking onto an enemy that's literally right in front of him. Swatting at a wall, no matter how beautiful, is a minor annoyance.

I still suggest that you go ahead and play this one. Following the story isn't necessary. The game itself often guides you past the cutscenes so you needn't force yourself to watch on the chance you'll miss what you're supposed to be doing. I haven't yet finished it, but there's a big chance I won't be going for Platinum. The requirements seem to verge into the tedious side of achievement with little reward. It's definitely worth playing, even if completion isn't on the menu.

Dragon Quest XI: Review

Because I tend to play the long game, additions to this blog are always few and far between. This also means I've scoured the game inside and out and, in this rare case, I also Platinumed this bitch on my PS4.

First, I'll get the bad out of the way, since you don't dump 120 hours into a game you hate, the bad clearly didn't override the experience. The dialogue, as is the case with a lot of JRPGs, is corny. Even for a game that is clearly infested with puns, this is an annoyance. All attempts to be dramatic or emotional fell flat for me. Then there is the 'post game' division. It's hard not to spoil their attempt to be mysterious, but let's just say this is a three part game. Three, not two. You can sandwich unavoidable ending credits after part two all you want, but the story isn't concluded by far and there's enough of the plot unresolved and hours to play that it's not really fooling anyone. However, I can't say I was that enchanted by the story at all, even as a nostalgic player of the series. Last, I'll throw this in: the battles letting you move your characters around doesn't fool anyone into it feeling less like turn-based battle and it's actually a pretty pointless mechanic. It doesn't really make much of a difference in enemy accuracy and later in the game, it's completely redundant.

Okay, one more gripe. The main character's design was dorky. The brown bob cut though. I almost always made sure he was in one of those fashion armory that disguised his default design. 

That being said, where gameplay is concerned, it's very solid. Jumping and movement wasn't clunky. I had zero incidents of glitchy movement, no getting trapped in walls, no slipping into areas I'm not supposed to be. I like that they took advantage of the map to block certain areas, to let me explore openly but strategize how to return to areas after the big bads blocked roads and opened new areas. The level and map design was well-done and the fast travel was limited but effective. I enjoyed the side quests. They were varied enough to be interesting with the most challenging being to kill an enemy with a specific Pep power or combo. The animations were skippable, which is always a plus.

Now, as for the Pep and crafting systems. The Pep one can be a bit tedious, but does come in handy here and there. It seems like there are more afflictions that limit your ability to use anything, even with accessories equipped, that make it even more difficult to work with the Pep timing. While your hero eventually gets Pep Up, your party is reduced to acquiring Pep Pips to get there. As for crafting, the little forge recipes aren't as abundant as I'd like and some are just a pain in the ass to get the materials for. You acquire skills that can make your blows more effective, but the five star ones are still sketchy as hell to not 'fail' at, let alone level up, even when maxed out. This is yet another game that uses systems either mindnumbingly simple or bafflingly impossible, but then I got spoiled with Dragon Age's more rewarding take on crafting.

I found this game to be well worth the time, even though I like to see more depth in my fantasy titles. The predictability of the story was high, but I wasn't expecting gymnastics in the story telling. It's a light hearted game that is at least worth whatever you paid for it. Give this one a try if you're an RPG fan that doesn't need the action element! However, I find Witcher 3 to be the best choice for those action lovers. 

Witcher 3: My Take

I know; it's been a while but the bulk of my time goes to pursuing my career as a writer so my author blog has been getting the attention. You probably noticed but I'm not one of those gamers that runs straight to the store on release day to pump out the fastest reviews that people read first. I am however a deep diver, one that will completely immerse myself in one solid title for months at a time. I set up camp and live there.

I keep telling people, I should have been a beta tester. If there is a way to break a completed game, I will find it.

First off, despite the many dated videos griping about the glitches, I ran into precious few and enjoyed tapping the Share button to record the two or three instances that entertained me. I might edit this post and post them once I crawl through my library and cut them into clips. I don't count Roach's weird pole and fence dances as a glitch. For one, I didn't use the horse much but to complete races. I haven't yet played a game where riding a horse wasn't awkward so I avoid it like the plague anyway.  Things that break the 'believability' or 'mood' factor in the free roaming parts of the game are amusing to me. Namely when people or animals walk right through you in conversations even. I may have mentioned that I am never so immersed that imperfections kill an experience.

Let me shoot right out of the gate with my biggest hang-up because it's really my only complaint. The battle system and the button setups are crap. I never got used to them and often pressed one button when I meant to do something else. It wasn't intuitive to my experience in this genre. It certainly wasn't unplayable but Geralt had the tendency to react too slowly to a button press or get caught on stupid obstacles. Buttons that shared a function were often bungled in combat. I'd want to climb or jump but if your weapon is drawn in combat mode, he has no clue how to handle it. The only real solution is to set drawing weapons to manual but it's annoying all by itself remembering which sword went to which for in a pinch. When I'm also juggling the Sign wheel and healing and guzzling potions, there's no real flow because of the interruptions in function. And really that's it for the cons.

It's a beautiful game. At first, the story wasn't that gripping, but I found I warmed to it. If you haven't bought it yet, definitely get the Complete Edition. The absolute best stories and features are part of the DLC. Ive heard it was a low budget game, that it wasn't predicted to be very good, but boy, was that off. The attention to facial expressions and movement is almost flawless. Again, there are some throwaways in the animation that don't measure up to perfect, but this is some of the best animation I've seen in facial expression for sure. When Geralt screws up his face in amusement or Shani shoots him a skeptical look at his bravado, you catch yourself mimicking it because muscles actually move like that.

If you're not into subquests, skip them. You're not going to find anything innovative there, but sometimes I like the predictability of these missions. There's always some little quirk in conversation or hidden bit of knowledge or humor that makes it worth it for me.

One of the best consequence systems in a game. Your choices actually have some far reaching consequences here. As much as I love Dragon Age, Witcher 3 beat it in terms of story variability. You can choose to badger people to pay you more, but sometimes choosing virtue can yield a bigger reward later. On the flip side, sometimes your do-gooder heart just means someone else gets shit on later. Life is like that and the right thing doesn't always mean a happy ending.

I've never read the books and the game doesn't really make me want to. The themes are very familiar,creatures you've seen in fantasy before, places that exist, just with unique names slapped on them. The Witcher concept is kind of unique but not wildly unpredictable. Nevertheless, the logic holds up and the story is interesting. I like that it is dark, intelligent and emotional-- right up my alley.  The twisted fairy tales theme is fun and familiar for me. I've done it a time or two myself.

Overall, it earns Game of the Year status. I think Geralt is retiring but I wouldn't mind another Witcher game, maybe shifting over to one of the nearly extinct young Cat School witchers. It would be a little too cliche to have Ciri pick up the torch, but I wouldn't hate it. She's a bit of a Mary Sue at this point but she was an excellent secondary character. I want to know more about the Cat and Manticore schools, one dying out, the other extinct. Okay, maybe the longtime fans wouldn't agree or would be happy to tell me it's already in other games, but I've learned that going retro is often not that impressive. The first Dragon Age was an eyesore after Inquisition although the second was decent. I already find it weird that Bioware is taking to making their characters increasingly more unattractive. The huge leap in graphics between games is bad enough.

Check out Witcher 3 if you haven't. I'm not going to go back for the other games, but I wouldn't hate to continue my interest in possible future entries.

E3 has at least one bit of truly exciting news ahead. Kingdom Hearts 3 is getting a release date. A lot of Dragon Age fans want more info on the fourth game, some already uneasy that Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem might sink them before we see Dragon Age to completion but let's be real: the only movement we've seen in the DA arena are announcements that there are writers at the ready. I'm not expecting to see substantial news in the next three years or a release date for the next five. It's the current climate in developing these big beautiful bastards and rushing them has never yielded anything fans weren't disappointed by. I'm patient; KH3 will appease me.

Skyrim Review: Part Deux

So.  I caved and ended up getting the remaster sooner than anticipated and I've sunk a few solid days worth of hours into it before coming up with my impression.

Of course, I loved the enhanced graphics, right out of the gate.  Many reviewers have touted this with far better vocabulary and technical terms than I could.  It's gorgeous and my main reason for wanting it.  That being said, let's get a little technical.

My friend Joe warned me that crashes were still a thing on the PS4 version.  I started to notice this from the onset.  It wasn't terribly frequent but I do notice that repeatedly putting games into rest mode seems to encourage what might be best described as accumulative errors.  Crashing issues seem to be avoidable as long as I close out of the game app and restarted from time to time.  No biggie, but a little annoying.  (Let me add that on the latest patch, I haven't had a crash since, so I am guessing their stability fixes took care of this.  Hooray!)

The save system, of course, had to take on a slightly different approach and seeing as this was one of the original issues with the initial game, I expected that.  You can now quicksave (which was also frequently utilized until they fixed the crashing) and a hard save isn't necessary in that case.  I still log a hard save after so many hours of play time and I do actually allow the autosave feature to stay on.  I don't often do that.  In any case, instead of it showing up directly on the game menu, it always says "New Save" but opens into the PS4 menu where your saves actually are.  No big deal.

Quests are still glitched, if not more so.  While these problems still existed on the PS3 version, I managed to avoid most of them although it appears I am managing to not avoid them on this one.  I have about 4-5 quests that I did finish but didn't go away or just hang without any prompt on what to do.  In those cases, I already know how to finish them, but still... they don't always go away.  For a completionist, this is a little irritating, but not game breaking.

I regret to say I haven't yet gotten to the mods, which was never an incentive for me anyway.  You can't earn trophies with them turned on and I am a trophy whore. I intend to platinum this bitch all over again and when I do, I will be happy to add my review.  Even better because I have heard some complaints on PS4's mods and chances are, some of these issues might be fixed by the time I sink in the months worth of time it will take me to be rid of every nook and cranny again.

This game just doesn't get old for me.  Like Dragon Age Inquisition, I can easily sink a lot of replay value from it.  So many ways you can approach it and STILL find something you thought you did waiting to be found.  People can say it is overhyped, but it is perfect for someone like me who had a short attention span and isn't terribly pressed on the beaten path.  I still enjoy the glitches that surface with absolute glee.  And let's be honest, I abuse the shit out of the Share button when I strike gold on one.

After all this time, it is still good and if games copy it at all, good on them.  I still stand by my belief that this game SHOULD be a model for the direction of open world action RPGs for a good long while.  It has created a solid base plus more for the genre.  You'd have to hate this genre to not see the value of, not just this one, but even the dated Oblivion.  Sorry, fans, but Morrowind was a clunky bit of hell by the time I got my hands on it, so I won't have the same sentimental attachment to it that it might have once been capable of.  That being said, if you're a fan of lore and fantasy and exploration, this is a slice of heaven.  You will be able to forgive its flaws-- I was perhaps even more forgiving because apparently I had the golden PS3 that never experienced the same game-breaking flaws that had flooded Bethesda's forums.  The PS4 didn't magically remedy all of them, but it was a valiant effort and definitely modernized it for another handful of years.  It is still being patched and it is still being modded.  I think it has more life off of the shelf yet and it will be a trophy in my collection beyond that.

No, it's not for everyone.  Don't be absurd.  I still loved the fuck out of it.

Dragon Age and the Magic of Nostalgia

One thing that has become clear as the OGs age is that nothing quite mars subjectivity like a big whopping dose of nostalgia.  I think we're all a little guilty of insisting that one game in a series was never topped, for one reason or another, even when it sometimes doesn't hold up at all.  This isn't unique to gamers.  I've tried to go back and watch tv shows or movies I swore were amazing as a kid, just to blink in embarrassment wondering why I decided to destroy the magic by staring the dragon in the mouth.

The point is that Dragon Age seems to be a fanbase guilty of this.  It's not even a series that has much seniority in the gaming world and its games certainly weren't so far apart as some of its bigger competitors.  Still, I hear a lot of people insisting nothing beat the flagship game.

Maybe this is why my opinion differs so strongly.  I played the Dragon Age demos and watched my nephew playing them years ago and basically filed it under a play-later status.  I never picked up the series until Inquisition and I fell so much in love with the lore and the emotional development aspects that I finally decided to pick up the first two.  After you play Inquisition, the gameplay in Origins is so stilted, the graphics so dated, that even the story couldn't save it for me.  You just don't have the options Inquisition spoils you with either.  While I did enjoy it for the lore, I was eager to see if the second game didn't give me a headache.  I really hated that camera...

The second game is graphically beautiful, even dated.  Fenrir was a character I loved to hate and made me realize that there was a real trend with elves being a pain in the ass to romance in these games.  While I only played through the first game to complete it (and I did do the DLC) with Alistair, I actually romanced Fenrir, Merrick, and Anders in this one out of sheer curiosity.  Anders is by far one of the most aggravating but intriguing characters in that how you interact with him over the games vastly changes some of the storylines.  The one big gripe I share with others are the lazily recycled maps.  There was absolutely no attempt to cover up how unmotivated that element was.  Still, I found the game enjoyable, really loving to see more of Varic's and Cassandra's back story.

My biggest complaint with Inquisition is how little the old cast came in at all.  Morrigan's appearance was the biggest throughout and even her storyline stayed pretty enigmatic.  Connor gets a brief showing if you saved him in the World Save option, but you get mere mentions of the elven assassin from the first game and the insufferable Prince Sebastian if you bother to even read the table quests.  Alistair gets some optional appearances as well, with some mentions his relationship to the original game's character depending on decisions too.  If you don't get Alistair as your grey Warden escort, you get pegged with the so-so Stroud.  I found the choice between your Hawke and Alistair much harder a decision to make when it came time to sacrifice one.  The other two games were so complementary with these crossovers that it seemed like a real letdown once I realized how very little  Inquistition used either of its predecessors plot set-ups.

I loved the characters in Inquisition.  Even though I would have loved to push Vivienne off her balcony a few times, once I played through the game a few times, I didn't feel like I could do without any of them.  The banter amongst your party when you were out wandering really solidified how these characters felt about each other.  It didn't take much to figure out sexual preferences, but it wasn't flaming gay, bull dyke, sexually typical tropes shoved in your face.  Even the transgendered Krem was completely cool with it when you don't realize he has girl parts.  Some people picked this apart in reviews too, but I felt that these things were done naturally and if they were imperfect, it only lent to the realism of human interaction.  We're a little embarrassing and hard to understand sometimes.  I find it endearing to reflect that in a fantasy game.

I also was in love with crafting in this game.  It had the sort of options that really made it interesting and I didn't find it overwhelming.  The payoff of really learning the system was some of the best gear in the game.  In subsequent playthroughs, it can make getting that nightmare mode trophy almost easy.  Some of the armor looked ridiculous on some characters and I found myself too often passing up the strongest options because they were aesthetically awful.  It's a system I would like to see more fleshed out in a later entry.

As far as gameplay went, while there were some buggy spots, it wasn't frustratingly so.  One issue I did notice was that the audio would get a bit wonky-- cutting out or cutting off-- and the only way to fix it was to close out of the game and re-enter.  Not a huge deal, only seemed to be an issue after repeated entries into rest mode.  This seems to be an issue with a lot of games-- games seem to like to be rebooted like computers that go to sleep too often.  I am noticing this mostly in games ported over and originally made for PS3.  I'd be interested to hear more about other people's experiences and theories on this.

Inquisition was definitely my sentimental favorite.  It was a visually beautiful game and I made the effort to Platinum it since I enjoyed chasing down as many new conversations and relationships as possible.  While Origins might have set a tone for those players who played them sequentially, I found I simply enjoyed the second and third games more.  It's a series I can definitely recommend and think it definitely gives you your money's worth if you like action RPGs with open world freedom where relationships determine your options, all set in a medieval fantasy world with dragons and magic.  It's not a perfect series, but it has potential.  I hope the developers do it justice and bring us closer to tying up those plots!