Fresh Start

I know. Its sad that I can only muster the force of will to update my blog every six months or so. I have a pretty good excuse this time, at least I think I do. Back in August I began a new chapter in my life with the start of Optometry school, four more years of classes, labs, clinicals, papers, tests, stress, stress eating, anxiety, but mostly, fun. I'm between classes right now, in the midst of a Cell Injury sandwich (before and after lunch). As delicious as it sounds, the dessert course to today's gourmet schedule is Head and Neck anatomy, one of the most grueling and technical classes known to first year students. Needless to say the excitement level is high for the weekend to be here, and hopefully it will bring me the energy and effort to go into more depth about my current status as well as future plans. That's all for now, hope to be back soon.

Punishing Games

So this week, I've been thinking about punishing games. This category extends to any game that requires repetition (in my opinion) needlessly. The most recent example I've played, and subsequently stopped playing because of this, was Devil May Cry 4. I played through the 3rd game on Normal and enjoyed the experience. I hated the lack of checkpoints, and the insane difficulty of bosses, but I did somehow manage to beat it without getting fed up. I'm not sure whether I had a higher tolerance for bullshit at the time, or what, but as a result of feeling like I'd done well in the 3rd game, I decided to try the 4th on Hardcore difficulty. Big fuckin' mistake.

I am definitely a competent gamer, and have completed some challenging games on higher difficulties. I don't usually enjoy this experience, with the exception of both Kingdom Hearts games, but I figured I would give it a shot in DMC 4. One thing I didn't realize was that thanks to the hyper-Japanese design philosophy, each set of "Missions" could only be run through consecutively on one difficulty. This meant that I got to the last boss mission, found him to be stupidly difficult, and also discovered I couldn't just bump the difficulty down to face him. To try to beat him on Normal difficulty, I would effectively need to play through the ENTIRE GAME again, on Normal, to unlock that mission on that difficulty. That is 100% Testicle Sack on my face.

Upon discovery of this little gem of design, I attempted the last boss a few more times, albeit halfheartedly, and then threw in the towel on DMC 4. I had been rather dissatisfied with it since it abruptly switched the character and move set half way through the game. This was the point at which I was finally feeling competent with Nero and his Uber-Devilclaw-Get-over-here move. But then, anticipating my comfort level, Capcom wisely decided to pull the rug out from under me by switching the perspective to Dante because Nero got owned like a punk bitch by the Pope or something. My memory of this plot is intentionally fuzzy, because the heinous objectification of female characters and asinine overall plot didn't really do it for me. In any case, this shift from one character who I'd been working on upgrading and mastering to one who handled COMPLETELY differently really pissed me off. To compound this inconvenience, you, or should I say Dante, are thrown right into level 11 with no fanfare, tutorial, or slack. This made relearning how to play the game an exercise in frustration and controller throwing. The one saving grace is that all of the levels were familiar, since you just stroll back through all of them and even get to retread some of those lovely puzzles from the first time around. What a joy.

By now, you might be thinking that Capcom had realized that it might be difficult to switch perspectives and play styles once, smack in the middle of the game and may even have repented their ways. You would be mistaken. For the last set of missions, which are end boss fights in the form of the Basilica with wings and lasers, and of course the Pope himself, you are once again pitched back into the feeble body of Nero, throwing away all that progress you just made learning how to play Dante's four different classes, lack of claw arm ball grabbing, and varied weapon sets. Thanks Capcom. By this point I wanted this experience to be over so I could tell an adult about this abuse. But I did my damnedest to fight the inert colossus that floated quite solemnly in the air. After getting insta-killed by his eye beams a few times, I wised up and took out his shadow orbs, leading to his demise. Following this, Nero did some more goofy shit resulting in him facing off against the Pope. But wait. The Pope isn't a feeble dude who can quite literally be head-butted to death (See Assassin's Creed II for details), no he is a devilishly powerful and frustrating old man with lots of shields. Throughout the final showdown with him, I would arm grab over to him, try unleash a combo, but consistently fall just short of being in range, or being able to fully take down his shields. Then the old douche would teleport away, recharge his shields and hand out some punishment in the form of more lasers. There were a few times you could do context sensitive arm grabs that resulted in beating the already corpse-like old dude handily before tossing away his desiccated body, but after doing this a few times and not making much of a dent, I still ended up losing to the bastard. Repeat this a few times, then realize that you can't try on an easier difficulty.

I did make an effort to search forums and walkthroughs for a solution, but most of them either told me to fight him the way I had been, or suggested grinding orbs so I could upgrade Nero by replaying old levels. No fuckin' thank you. I had already endured all these levels at least twice in my one play through, I did not feel the need to go back and fight more enemies so I could kill one old dude. This useless advice clinched my decision to give up, something I can't say I've often done on a game I invested that much time in, but I decided it wasn't really worth the aggravation and cost of dental work to fix the wear of resultant teeth grinding.

In the months since abandoning all hope for DMC, I have grown increasingly disenfranchised with Eastern style games that are all about missions, titties and grinding. I tried the Bayonetta demo and found the combat was pretty fun, but the character and plot sent me running for the hills. The lack of understanding about how to implement achievements is another bone i would gladly pick with these developers, because in my 12+ hour play through of DMC 4 up to the last level, I netted a whopping 125 points out of 1000. That, to me, is total shite. I know that the meta-game aspect of achievement points aren't paramount to enjoyment of a title, but honestly by now there should be an understanding that people A) Like achievements and B) Want to earn them at an appreciable rate, either logistically or linearly. In either case, it shouldn't ever require more than two play throughs even begin to earn half of the available achievements. This may be a minor blow against these games, but it does add to my reluctance to touch any more of these titles. And one thing I should make clear is that I want to like these titles, I grew up being a huge fan of multiple forms of uniquely Japanese media, such as anime, manga, and in particular JRPGS: Final Fantasy, Mario RPG, Kingdom Hearts to name a few. I wish I was more enthusiastic about upcoming titles, but increasingly find that I'm not jazzed about hours of repetition, punishment, and whacky tacky plotlines.

Ethical Business Practices

I enjoy fake companies. I do want to make Delta Tees an LLC for legal reasons (we're totally going to get sued, or at very least asked to cease and desist), but legal jargon aside, I also would like to make a faux parent company with a dubious name. Something like "Ethical Business Practices" or "Venturetek Synergies Conglomerate". For whatever reason, corporate and PR double-speak has a soft spot in my otherwise hard heart, and I enjoy emulating (read: ridiculing) it when the chance arises. The Scheinhardt Wig Company of 30 Rock lore comes to mind as a prime example of this, with such a noble slogan as "Not poisoning rivers since 1997".

In that same vein, I enjoy spit balling and having brainstorming sessions to come up with new tee ideas that I personally can't Photoshop. Writing things on white boards makes it feel somehow more official, and don't even get me started with Post-It notes. Whenever I dress up, I feel more capable of accomplishing things; case in point: today, I had a presentation at a Research Conference on my studies over the past year in my research laboratory. To this end, I was dressed in fancy-pants'ed attire, but I saw a noticeable difference in the respect and general inclinations towards me of strangers. People somehow assumed I must be important since I put in all the effort of tying a tie at the crack of noon for this event, and as a result cleared a path for me to stride industriously about and not actually have much to do. Like Lenny from the Simpsons once said: "I'm making great time! If only I had somewhere to be..." That was pretty much how I felt today, wandering aimless-but-importantly around. The moral of this incessant ramble is that if you want to get something done, dress up, walk around a public place, and then channel that feeling of worth into doing something else.

Dear Japan

Stop.

Please stop making traditional cookie cutter J-RPGs. Let Square Enix do their thing with Final Fantasy (for now at least, they too are on a probationary period where they need to prove they can have an original thought that isn't "Girl-Cloud"), but otherwise, just stop. When given the option between last year's western RPGs: Mass Effect, Fallout 3, and Fable 2; and Japan's sad offerings: Lost Odyssey, Inifinite Undiscovery and The Last Remnant, the choice isn't difficult to make.


First of all, like I'm sure many others have pointed out before me, what the fuck is up with the titles? Infinite Undiscovery? Lost Odyssey? What is "undiscovery"? And furthermore, how can it happen an inifinite number of times? My guess is that there is a complex algorithm generated by Japan's ever advancing robots that somehow combines likely names of luxury sedans with an arbitrary temporal or spacial measurement.



Twins. Jesus H. Christ if I have to play one more RPG with adorably matching twins (identical or fraternal) I might give myself Three Red Lights by swallowing poison. In fact, I don't care if they aren't matching, I don't want to play as prepubescent sorceror/healer combinations, because we all know these kids couldn't possible swing a sword or tank some hits for the rest of the party. If I were to do it all over again, I'd consider studying the history of Japan so I could write my thesis on how hundreds of years of spirit worship, isolation and xenophobia lead to an enduring and questionable love of small children wearing bright outfits. Furthermore, these children are trekking around foreign countries with usually unrelated adults who kill people for a living. If only that second thought were as troubling as the first.



Gimmicks. Quick time events for EVERY SINGLE ATTACK (I'm looking at you Lost Odyssey). Ill-conceived vehicle sections (What the hell is a Gummi Ship anyway?). Forcing you to play as the C-list characters just because someone bothered to design them. MINI GAMES. Anyone who's been in a ten foot radius of a JRPG has likely seen at least one excruciating, gameplay-lengthening gimmick ham handedly included in the retail copy of the game. Even Fable II falls victim to this, although to be quite honest the game is really more a collection of gimmicks than a well crafted RPG. Peter Molynieux's Cossack-dancing lovechild aside, why oh why must these unnecessary elements be included in games that would otherwise be fun? How does jumping rope, dodging lightning, playing basketball, killing bees, or skateboarding advance or even incorporate itself into the plot of a large scale, world-saving narrative? Imagine if in the Fellowship of the Ring, before Frodo could flee from Bree with the company to Rivendell, the inkeeper stopped him and asked kindly that he pour drinks for the next five nights before he could get the money to buy a horse to get back to the interesting part of the movie?

This is part 1 of an unending series on the monotony of Japanese role playing games.

First Post

Look for forthcoming tee shirt designs, reviews of video games and television shows, and any other political or metaphysical musings by the Delta Tees staff.