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Review

Return, Switch, and unboxing Fate

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It’s been a while. Still struggling with my health plus all the points of settling in a new country. Looking at my post lists seems to have a few missing that were supposed to go up a while ago, but I’m not too bothered about a couple of posts yakking up the differences in gaming services in different countries. Let me just sum it up: being an expat in another country is a pain in the ass and region restrictions need to die a hard, hard death because I completely missed out on the stupid code-only Pokemon this last year. Do you know how annoying it is trying to get one from overseas?!

Secondly, just let me say that, in the wake of the Switch reveal Nintendo is cutting their own nose off to spite their face because the one perk of gaming on a Nintendo console was the free online play. It’s utter BS, especially considering you can get better service for free from places like Steam, which I’m not that particularly fond of either. Nah, my go-to place for old games is GOG. Also, if we’re seeing the end of the 3DS life what the heck does that mean for the recently released Pokemon? Are we going to get an even shorter lifespan for them than Black & White? I doubt a lot of kids will want to pay for battling and trading when they’ve been enjoying that for free all this time.

Anyway, the important subject: Fate/Extella. I just got the limited edition for my birthday from Marvelous! and couldn’t wait to unbox it, so I thought I’d share.

View once it popped out of the shipping package. Excuse the camera, my phone’s on the fritz (the Galaxy Note series is not doing very well lately) so of course my webcam is doing it’s best to be obnoxious. It does not deal with moving very well, so you’ll have to deal.

The box is covered with a plastic sleeve with the characters printed on it. For a moment I thought that was the front of the box. Digging Cu Chulainn’s look this time around.

Opening the box, you get a cloth poster, with handy rings for hanging on the wall. To be honest, I thought it would be slightly larger, but it’s nice quality for a cloth poster. Although, next to Tamomo’s head there’s a area where it looks like the printer ran out of reds right at that point, but I think I saw the odd color change on the original image too.

The Material book, in full English. It would be better than it is if they hadn’t translated Arturia as “Artoria” and I’m still scratching my head that they decided to use that for the English versions of Fate/s, the feminine forms of Arthur is Arthurine and Arturia. After how many years of fan translations, I’m pretty darned tired of the overly literal Japanese to English. (If you’ve ever tried to read the Fate/Zero translations, you probably know where I’m coming from.)

The illustrations are nice and clear, and there’s information on the characters in the back. It’s pretty thick for an extra in a box set. Now if only they’d give us an English option on Grand Order.

The game itself, pretty standard PS4 case.

And lastly, the character cards. There’s a range of all the Servants involved starting with Nero. The cards themselves are plastic and slightly translucent which gives the image a cool effect. On the back you see a white silhouette of the character in reverse.

I’ll have to review the game itself later on, when I’m not trying to finish up belated Christmas presents.

For about 65 pounds, not too bad a deal on a collector’s edition, though I’m still miffed we didn’t get the Nero figure I was hoping for (and not even the oppai mousepad, buuuut honestly I’d rather have had a Cu mousepad). On the bright side, the poster will look nice next to my /Zero posters.

Games

DuckTales Remastered Review: Freezing Issues not limited to PS3

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Face it, guys. DuckTales Remastered has a freezing problem.

I was disappointed when I started to do the research to make sure the freezing wasn’t just me. I mean, for god’s sake! The gaming industry got something RIGHT! This is what remade games should be- hugely better graphics, voices (I can’t get over how they got everyone from the show except for Mrs. Beakley and Fenton! I mean C’MON you got Alan Young!) all the extras you could want, and without losing anything of the original experience in the process- actually that’s the entire reason why I’m against a Final Fantasy VII remake these days, but that’s another story.

Google “ducktales remastered freezing problem” and you’ll likely come up with several hits on GameFaqs and some PS3 websites. Unfortunately, the freezing issues regarding the “saving content” and “black loading screens” is not limited to “old and fat” PS3 launches, or PS3 at all. Sure, the PS3 has some technical problems, especially if you remember that PS3 has made the Bethesda developers groan over getting the Skyrim downloadable content on it, and ultimately caused them to give up developing content for Skyrim at all, if you remember that interview where they bitched about how long it took them. But this time, PS3 isn’t the problem, or at least, not totally. I’ve had multiple freezes of DuckTales on the Wii U.

Yes, the Wii U.

In some of the exact same places the PS3 users describe, in fact; freezing on the extras screen just after it says “saving content” and on the loading screen while trying to go to the Amazon for a second run through. On top of that, I’ve had some glitching in other places like the Himalayan boss and lagging in the African Mine. Also something that the PS3 users complained of, sandwiched between the “Nope, have had zero problems with it” users. Seriously, why bother posting that you’ve had no problems?! That’s fine and dandy but posts like that are for people who ARE, and it just doesn’t help figure out the commonalities when someone has to dig through half a million “Nopes no problems LOL goobergoobergoober” posts.

Anyway, I didn’t actually have problems during the first run through, though, it was only after completing the game for the first time that the freezing issue seemed to crop up. So, logically it tells that it isn’t a problem with the console so much as something gone wrong in the programming. I can’t speak for how often it hits other users, but in about 5 hours of gameplay it only hit me twice, and the lag during the bosses wasn’t all that bad. It could have been a lot worse *coughpandora’stowercough* but it really isn’t enough to totally mar the game and make it unplayable, but it’s still annoying when it happens.

We can only hope that Wayforward releases a patch to fix it, but first we have to let them know that it’s happening.

At any rate, DuckTales Remastered pretty much says it in the titled. It’s practically a masterpiece, capturing the feel of the original 1989 and merging that with the feel of the cartoon in harmony. The backgrounds look exactly as one would expect in an episode, absolutely perfect. The game play is still difficult without being too much so, except for one place in the last level that might make you scream in frustration while being sucked down into a fiery pit of hell. The game has a system where the gems you gather are turned into dollars, and you can buy extras with them. I love the extras! I don’t want to spoil too much, but look at the character portraits carefully. Each level has a unique look, different helper characters, and has plenty of hidden places to find; don’t be afraid to jump into the ceiling ala Super Mario Bros.

Aside from the freezing issue, I felt the game was worth the $15 forking out for it (and if I remember correctly, is cheaper than the original game when we got it in 1990.)

The game gets a resounding 9 out of 10 from me, with the only drawbacks being the freezing and Mrs. Beakley’s voice. (I was really hoping they’d add more bonus levels to it outside of the main story so that Goldie would appear, too.)

So, a few minor problem in a great classic remade, and remade properly. It brought back a lot of memories of being a kid, playing Nintendo for hours with my friend who stuck out the summer with a broken arm.

 

Edit: I wasn’t aware at the time this went up that several of the voice actors had died since the show’s completion, including the actors who did Beakley and Fenton! I  was really sad to hear that and I felt a little bad about it afterward. However I still think they could have done better in getting a sound-alike for both characters, at least for Mrs. Beakley.

Games, TES: Skyrim

Re-posting “Skyrim, Spoilers, and those damned Nords”

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November 27 2011, 12:39 AM

Skyrim

Skyrim came out a couple of weeks ago. I’m thoroughly enjoying the game when I’m not being jolted out of immersion when I see the water clipping into the ground or that the game still suffers from many of the things that Oblivion did, such as terrain texturitis and closeup texturitis. Nor the fact that the Dunmer look like they have funky Romulan eyebrow ridges that I fully intend on fixing when the CK finally comes out, since even in Morrowind they didn’t look like that. Oh, and not to mention the x10 factor of game breaking bugs, such as Esbern’s voice bug or the Season Unending/Civil War bug for example. It seems almost as if Bethesda was so much in a hurry to get Skyrim released on that 11-11-11 date they skipped beta testing, and opted to rely on patches.

Considering how much they left in Oblivion for the Unofficial Oblivion Patch to fix, that makes me rather nervous. The UOP suffers from some bugs of its own, one where if you do a certain non-quest the Oblivion gate map markers will disappear. What will happen with Skyrim’s more advanced, more complicated system?

At any rate, they have at least improved the stealth system, making it actually possible for thief characters to be a viable option, something I’ve always been disappointed with in Oblivion. Also, mages are far more viable as well, and with a mod that tweaks things just a bit, are really very awesome. My first character is something of a combination of the two, like a Nightblade, so naturally she joined the College of Winterhold. During the Magic Anomaly attack, she shot lightning bolts from her fingers and destroyed all who stood in her way, along side of her college mates, who preferred more unusual forms of magic. Such as raising undead chickens.

One of my more favorite aspects of the game is sneaking around and sniping off targets with my Daedric bow. Bows actually do a decent amount of damage, and with enchantments, can actually kill someone in one hit, particularly of you have the perks to increase basic bow damage and sneak attack.

I’m a little disappointed with the whole enchantment system, on the other hand, as there’s even less to enchant in Skyrim than in Oblivion, and far far less than Morrowind. There’s also only one enchantment per item unless you have the Two Enchantments perk. To get a decent enchantment you practically have to be wearing a full suit of Fortify Enchantment gear, or find an Epic Item somewhere and skip enchanting at all.

Oh, here’s a video of an interesting way of completing Wolfskull Cave using only a bow and some luck.

I don’t know, there’s something satisfying about sneaking up on someone. It’s gotten better since Oblivion, but still, there’s times where I would be creeping around downstairs and some idiot upstairs had x-ray vision that could see me steal that loaf of bread. You can put a bucket on a shopkeeper’s head and steal them blind, but if the door is closed and they’re on the other side of it, you still get caught. Such inconsistency.

I may be biased due to my love of the classic-yet-almost-unheard-of Thief series, though. Now that is a stealth system I wish they would have used, it was one of the best, even in Deadly Shadows where the NPC AI was of questionable design (I mean, you can have the Pagans and the Brotherhood go at it in the streets and you’d be watching from a rooftop, the guards would find the body and still blame you. I mean what?).

Despite all that, I think the most value in Skyrim probably lays outside of the Main Quest and the dragons, so much hyped and yet it falls rather short. I was expecting more of an epic battle, kind of like the end of Oblivion, but no, it’s more of a personal quest over anything, and not a particularly epic one, either. That title would go to Planescape: Torment in Epic Personal Journey. I had to say I was a little disappointed with that. If I think about it, it really seems like a side quest more than anything. There’s only so many dragon attacks you can have before it gets boring.

And one last thing. Skyrim’s full of those damned Nords. They were annoying in Morrowind and Oblivion, but now it takes new heights. I can’t understand why anyone would even consider joining the Stormcloaks, especially if their character is an elf. The character of Ulfric seems to not grasp anything of what is going on with the Empire, being so obsessed with worshiping Talos and freeing Skyrim from the Imperial “tyranny,” he fails to see where the Imperials don’t like the Thalmor any more than they do. He fails to see that the Imperials may be planning another war, one that they might win, and everything he does in Skyrim negates that. One of the characters in Solitude said something to the effect that “Talos worship may be banned, but Tiber Septim was a man once, and this was his Empire.” and implied Ulfric was interested more in power rather than freedom. Because of this, I find Ulfric to be completely hypocritical. To worship Talos, or to preserve what he had created in life. What would have been better to honor him with? Ulfric has a lot of petty vanity and a severe lack of foresight.

Just got to keep my fingers crossed and hope the next game is in the Summerset Isles with all that delicious politicking and spying. And with the descriptions of the cities… That would make a truly epic game.