DLC Quest Hit or Miss?

This is gonna be a short one. Thankfully it's a breath of fresh air after writing the Pokemon gen 1 review for probably almost 24 hours for all 3 parts. But, lets not waste time and get to this cool indie title that I didn't see much buzz about when it was released and that I think is a great title that should've gotten more attention.

DLC Quest is a 2D side scrolling platformer indie title made by Going Loud studios. You are set on an epic quest to save the princess from that bad guy with the mustache. BUT, to do that you'll need to buy some DLC. Before you exit out of this and decide that the game isn't worth it if you need DLC to beat the game know that this is a satirical game. The dlc is purchased in game with coins you collect by doing the platforming.

The whole point of DLC quest is to take a satirical stab and what at the time were trends that the AAA games were starting to take hold. Cutting parts of the games off and selling them later as a separate package (sometimes even on day one which was even more of a shitty move) and pre-order bonuses. Today we expect these things but, back in 2011 (original release date on the Xbox 360) this was still a new thing and many think that DLC and pre-order culture is what made AAA titles lackluster and kept their companies greedy. This, I believe, to be correct and most games, when DLC was becoming a regular thing, either had outright bad DLC or had DLC that was not worth the price of admission.  Today, however, ... okay it's not that much better. There are still many games that come out with bad or overpriced DLC but, many games in the recent past couple years have also used DLC very effectively (Payday 2, Mass Effect 2 and 3, Outlast, and Bioshock Infinite to name a few.)

I originally played DLC quest way back in 2012 and at the time it was a small 20 minute game that was a cool jab at those trends. But, in march of 2013 DLC quest came out with a free expansion that added a second campaign to it. The Live Freemium or Die campaign is a longer more expansive campaign with a different story to it. There is a village that has been experiencing a spike in mysterious death recently and the hero must get to the bottom of it ... by buying some DLC. The Live Freemium or Die campaign has a separate set of DLC packs and has some different mechanics. While i still remembered some of the original campaign I had never played the Live Freemium or Die campaign.

It's Overall not a long game but, I think that works in it's favor. I think that because of its satirical nature making it longer than it is would end up being a detriment. It's just long enough so that it doesn't overstay its welcome. The Live Freemium or Die campaign was an excellent addition that I like more than the original campaign. So yeah, DLC quest was a great time. Its short length makes repeated playthroughs easy and with the in-game timer function speed runs and easily accessible. You can purchase DLC Quest on Xbox 360, Windows, or Mac HERE

Pokemon Kanto Hit or miss? (Part 3: The review Pokemon Fire Red)

I'm glad to report that I get to be a lot more positive for this last section of the review. While i do still love Pokemon Red/Blue/Green/Yellow their glitches and balancing problems can be exhausting to deal with. Pokemon Fire Red however fixes ALMOST EVERYTHING! Pokemon Fired Red is based of the Gen 3 (Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald) engine. This means all the glitches, bugs, and balancing problems are fixed in Fire Red/Leaf Green. This also means that Pokemon now have abilities which makes Pokemon like Weezing and Gengar better since they have levitate making them immune to ground attacks which they were previously weak to. Lastly the gen 1 special stat is Split from Gen 2 onward into Special attack and Special Defense which means that Pokemon with high special attack (like Alakazam) no longer have high defense against special attacks which fixes the balance of Psychic types. Finally, the Gen 3 engine means natures now exist. Natures are combinations of one stat getting an increase while another stat gets a decrease (ex: Modest nature decreases physical attack while increasing special attack.) This lets you either push a Pokemon's best stat higher then before or you could use it to cover up a Pokemon weaker stat.

Pokemon Fire Red also adds a new area to the Kanto region called the Sevii Islands. They are introduced after getting the volcano badge from Blaine when Bill shows up outside the gym and invites you to go with him to the islands. There is also an after Pokemon league story section that takes place in the Sevii islands that extends the game's length a tad. As a bonus after getting the national dex by obtaining 60 Pokemon in the Kanto Pokedex the Sevii islands have some Gen 2 pokemon show up (some notable examples are Heracross, Skarmory, Larvitar, and Mantine.) Finally, after doing the Sevii islands content the Elite four has a second round where they have leveled up their teams and revampingthier teams with some from the national dex (for example: Lorelei has a Piloswine from gen two instead of a Slowbro from the first League challenge.)

With all that said here was my team for Fire Red:

There really is only one small issue i have with Fire Red and Leaf Green and its an issue that has was around Pokemon until gen 4. In Gens 1 through 3 there is no Physical special split for moves. What that means is that in gens 1-3 attacks are divided into physical and special by TYPE instead of a case by case basis. This means that thunderPUNCH is a special attack because it's and electric type attack. This is really only a small complaint and it is fixed gen 4 onward. You can also take advantage of that like I did for example as you can see above. Bite is a dark type move which in gens 1-3 is a special move which is why it was on Vaporeon. It let me deal with Pokemon like Alakazam by hitting it with Vaporeon who could take psychic's from it really well.

I did sadly stop Fire Red after the first Elite four run because i had still intended to finish the reviews of Blue and Fire Red during June but as the deadline crept closer I realized that there was no way that it was going to happen. Hopefully all there of the parts together got my point across. I really love Gen 1 but, its bugs and balancing problems take a bit of either getting used to or research to abuse yourself do lower its enjoyment for me and make it hard to recommend to anyone that isn't a Pokemon fan. The remakes however I FULLY recommend to any RPG fan who thinks the premise of gathering a team of monsters to battle for you sounds interesting or fun. Even if not I'd still encourage you give Fire Red a try at least to see if you like them. After all you never really know until you try. Pokemon Blue can be bought on the 3DS E-Store or as a GB cartridge (It'll cost you a lot though) and Fire red is only available as a GBA cartridge (it can be expensive depending on where you find it.)

Pokemon Kanto Hit or Miss? (Part 2: The review Pokemon Blue)

Pokemon Gen 1 has its fair share of problems however (specifically the original releases of Red, Green, and Blue.) There were numerous glitches and overall balance problems that can hinder your enjoyment or (if you take advantage of them) can lead to a better experience.

Since there are too many to mention the graphic

< there is a compilation of some of the glitches and bugs in gen 1.

Additionally, the Psychic type is immensely overpowered for a few reasons. First off in gen 1 there were very few good bug types (really only Pinsir and Scyther.) Secondly, the only Ghost types in gen 1 were the Gengar line which are also part poison which is weak to psychic. Thirdly, there were no good bug or ghost type attacks that do damage (the best bug attack is a toss-up between twineedle and pin missile and the ONLY damaging Ghost move is lick because Night shade deals fixed damage based on level.) Fourthly, in gen 1 the pokemon's offensive and defensive stats are divided differently. Pokemon attacks can be either physical or special which pull offensive power from either a pokemon's physical or special attack respectively and take damage based of that pokemon's physical or special defense. In gen 1 however, there was no special defense stat instead there was a special stat that was BOTH special attack and special defense so, psychic pokemon (who specialize in special attacks) had high special attack and defense. Finally, (and this is something that i didn't even know until researching this) there is a glitch in the game where Ghost type damaging attacks(which to be fair is only Lick), that are supposed to be super effective, DO NOT effect Psychic types. This was so bad that Gen 2 had to introduce two new types (Dark and Steel) that would check Psychic types and make them more balanced.

So with all that in mind here was my team of champions:

From first hand experience I can now say the psychic types are overpowered as fuck. Scryfish came to the rescue multiple times when another one of the party fell and could tank hits like no other pokemon on the team could. 

As a Pokemon fan going back to gen 1 to relive the roots of the franchise was super fun and gave me a lot of nostalgia moments of when first playing gen 1 back when it released. I do however recognize that a rpg fan jumping into Pokemon Red, Blue, or Green with no prior knowledge would probably have a generally miserable time as the glitches and general failing of balancing could just turn off general rpg fanatics.

So I've been generally pretty mixed here mentioning a lot of negatives and a couple of positives and that generally sums up my feelings on Pokemon Red/Green/Blue. While I still love them as Pokemon games because of how thankful I am to them for introducing me to video games I do recognize that the games has aged really poorly and has many flaws to the point where i would only recommend them IF AND ONLY IF you are a fan of Pokemon and want to see how the franchise began. Otherwise i would strongly recommend that instead of Red/Gren/Blue you play Fire Red or Leaf Green instead as your first Pokemon game.

Since there really isn't much story to all of the games outside of just going on a Pokemon journey and occasionally getting stopped by team rocket its not much of a draw. To me the draw of Pokemon is trying different compositions of Pokemon  teams to see which combination work well together and which don't. This is why I play so much Pokemon. Because of how many Pokemon there are that leads to so many different team compositions that even 20 years after release this is the first time I've used a Starmie in a playthorugh of a Pokemon game.

Even though these games have aged really poorly, I'm sure this won't be the last time I play gen 1 of Pokemon. Even through all of the glitches and broken balancing I had a really good time reliving gen 1.

Pokemon Kanto Hit or Miss? (Part 1: The set-up)

I'm going to be straight with this one. I am SEVERELY biased in my opinion on these games. Pokemon Yellow was the first video game I ever beat. Pokemon Gold (and later on Crystal) took the majority of my playtime when I was a kid. Pokemon in general IS my favorite video game franchise. I will do my best however to put that bias aside while writing this review as often as i can.

Pocket Monsters Red, Green, and Blue
Japanese Box art

For this review i will be covering all of the first gen games AND the remakes from gen 3 and what differences the versions have. Yes, that's 6 games in one review (Pokemon Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Fire Red, and Leaf Green.) For this review I played both Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Fire red. I played Blue through BGB and Fire Red through VBA.

Pokemon Red, Blue, Yellow English Box art

Now before anyone yells at me for using emulators I would like to point out that I do own both Blue and Fire red. I own a Virtual console version of Blue on the 3DS and I still have a original cartridge of Fire red on the GBA but, the save battery of my Fire red cart is dead so it doesn't save and I wanted to start fresh in Blue rather than continue the save i already had started on the virtual console and didn't want to reset it.

Pokemon Fire red and Leaf green English box art

For reviews i generally like to avoid using emulators and play them on the hardware I remember them on but, for those reasons I used emulators instead for this one. I will point out in the future if something like this ends up happening again (which i can already think of one or two occurrences.) That being said I have a lot to cover for this so we'll move on.

There really isn't much story to Pokemon games in general. You basically go through the same motions in most games. You start you're Pokemon journey with your best friend(s) or rival as the Pokemon professor of the region gives you a choice of 3 starters in your quest to travel the region, see the sights, capture some more Pokemon, and build a team of Pokemon to take on the gyms and the Pokemon league of the region. Some time during your travels you will run into a crime syndicate that will impede your progress until you deal with them. This will happen multiple times until you fully defeat their leader and you, a ten year old (or in later games a teenager), thwart their plans and they disband.

This is true of all of the Gen 1 games and the remakes. They were the first games after all and they set this standard for the main series games. There are some small differences however for Pokemon Yellow. Pokemon Yellow follows the Pokemon anime including having Pikachu be your only starter and having Ash and Gary in the default names section of the player character and rival respectively. Jesse and James from team rocket even make a cameo in Yellow.

For those who didn't know when Pokemon released in Japan its first two versions were Pocket Monsters Red and Green. Pocket monsters Blue was an updated version of the original two versions and then Blue was the template that was used when translating them to English to be released else where as Pokemon Red and Blue (which explains why the remakes were Fire red and Leaf Green instead of Fire red and Water blue or some other such title.).

So before picking which version I played I looked through the exclusives for each version. Pokemon was made essentially to be a more social video game back then to justify the link cables that were used at the time to connect game boys for various features (in Pokemon's case to trade and battle other people) so they took the 150 Pokemon and made some of them only appear in the wild to be captured in one version but not the other. This made you , if you wanted a Pokemon that was an exclusive for one version and you had a different version, either have to buy that version, another game boy, and link cable to trade from one to the other or have a friend who had that version and one of you has a link cable to trade with each other. I ended up picking Blue version for the originals and Fire Red for the remakes for one exclusive in each. Pokemon gen 1's exclusives can be found here and the exclusives for the gen 3 remakes can be found here.  I picked Blue for Ninetales and I picked Fire Red for Arcanine.

Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance Hit or Miss?

So after having a awful time playing Castlevania Circle of the moon. which led me to start this whole blog, I decided that after writing the Payday 2 review I would go back and play the other gba Castlevanias to see how they compared. This review will be the next gba Castlevania released which was Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance. (Also i may have taken the time to be less lazy with this one and learned more about blogger to add images and such to make shit look less barren.)

Box Art

Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance (which past here i will refer to as HoD) released on June 6, 2002 for the gba. HoD was developed and published by Konami and released to positive reviews and currently holds a 87 on metacritic. HoD was the second Castlevania game released for the gba.

The Story

HoD stars Juste Belmont and his friend Maxim who are looking for their childhood friend Lydie who was captured and taken to a castle. As soon as they get to the front gates however, Maxim remarks that the castle feels familiar and he and Juste split up to cover more ground faster. Juste runs into Death in the castle and he confirms that the castle is indeed Dracula's castle. Juste finds portals in the castle that seem to teleport him to other area's of the castle but, Juste notes that the atmosphere seems to change when he goes through the portals. Juste runs into Maxim again after his first trip through the portal and Maxim's entire personality seems to have changed as he seems openly antagonistic towards Juste before the two split up once again to continue their search.

Juste finds Death again in the top room of the clock tower in front of a different looking portal and Death reveals that he has been switching between two layers of the castle. The castle split into layers because when Maxim had gone on a quest to destroy the remains of Dracula but, when Maxim collected the final piece he lost all memory of the time between when he collected that piece and when he returned from his journey and told Juste of Lyie's capture. Juste meets up with Maxim who seems to be his old self again but, Maxim warns Juste that he can feel his second persona gnawing at his mid trying to take control and that Maxim was who kidnapped Lydie but, he wiped his memory to stop his second persona from knowing where she was. Maxim gives Juste his bracelet that gives him access to Lydie's location in the top floor of the castle and tells Juste to hurry. Juste reaches her only to have her stolen away by Death who plans to use here blood to untie the two layers of the castle by destroying Maxim's spirit leaving only the spirits of Dracula's remains in him. Juste tracks down Death and finishes him but, Maxim's Dracula persona has tracked Lydie to the center of the castle. Juste rushes there to confront him to see if he can save his friends from Dracula.

(From left to right) top row: Juste, Lydie, Maxim

Bottom row: Merchant, Dracula, Death

The Gameplay

HoD is a metriodvania title with all the bells and whistles you would expect from the genre. 2D side-scrolling platforming with progressive unlocks to movement options to access more of the castle. Armor and whip tips scattered though out the castle and a roaming merchant who appears in some room  if you meet the requirement. Some sub-weapons return to be used with hearts to give Juste some projectile attacks and HoD adds is spell books to the mix which can be combined with sub-weapons to cast spells with magic points.

Juste fusing the fire spell book and axe to cast a magic spell.

The good

I played HoD twice for this review, one Juste mode and one Juste hard mode, and got the best ending for both with 200% map completion. Now to answer the main question. Did I Like HoD or was it a painful slog and grind fest like Circle of the moon?  I ended up really enjoying  HoD actually. I only really intended to play it once in Juste mode and write my review with that but, after finishing it the first time and starting to write this review I ended up picking it up again and played it on hard mode.  I really liked that you started off with the dash which made movement much faster and dodging attacks easier.

Having armor and medicine static drops through the castle cuts the need to rely on farming enemies for HOURS to get a couple drops to have healing items in stock or have armor that doesn't suck. Spell books are also static items that are always in the same spot instead of farming one enemy for HOURS to get the enemy to drop the card for your spells. Having a merchant in the castle also means that you can just buy potions an armor instead of having to grind  for HOURS to get a few item drops off enemies to stock up on potions or get armor that doesn't suck.

What I'm saying is that HoD fixes pretty much every problem I had with Circle of the moon and thus made it a much more enjoyable experience for me. There is however, some problems that HoD has that subtracts from its experience.

The bad

HoD's magic is way too powerful for one. Specifically the axe fire combo, the lighting cross combo, and the wind cross combo. The fire axe combo has Juste create two flaming wyrms that seek out enemies and crawl around them dealing multiple high damage hits which easily cut down bosses health substantially.The lightning cross combo is basically a 2D grand cross, if you don't know what that means it's a move where you character with float in the air and have crosses come up from the ground circling you and the crosses deal massive damage to enemies that get hit by them, and the wind cross combo is a protective circle of crosses that deal moderate damage to enemies that come in contact with them and is great for traversing the castle with little effort. You can even cast the wind cross combo and then save to regen all of your magic and have the full cross circle up.

The second problem I have with HoD kind of stems from the overpowered magic. HoD is too easy in my opinion. I died once in the normal playthrough and only died 5 times on hard mode and only ONE of those deaths was too a boss. That one death was to the cyclops in hard mode which if he hits you with his hammer dealt like 1/4 of my max health. This ease I believe is from magic being way to powerful. The only thing hard mode does, if you're curious, is that enemies take less damage and you take more damage.

There is third small problem but, its so minor that it didn't really mean to much to me in terms of this review. Some of the bosses are really uninspired. There a a few bosses tat are just big versions of regular enemies and they even used the Minotaur TWICE. This idn't really mean too much to me however other than the fact that its obviously quite a bit lazy.

The Verdict

These problems however didn't end up souring the experience of playing HoD and there are even more modes you can play. Maxim mode puts you in control of Maxim instead of Juste. Maxim has all of the movement required to access all of the castle at the very start but, in exchange for that Maxim doesn't level up and can't use potions. No magic mode is exactly as it sounds, the spell books are removed from their locations meaning no spells for Juste to use, making Juste rely on his whip and sub-weapons. Lastly there is the standard boss rush mode and sound test mode which are what they sound like. All of those modes including hard mode are locked until you beat the game once on normal Juste mode. Sound test requires getting the best ending however.

Like other Metriodvania games HoD has multiple endings depending on how much of the game you played and how you fight the final boss. There are 3 (technically 4) endings to HoD:

Bad Ending: Collect all 6 pieces of Dracuala's remains and defeat Maxim in the castle B center.

Okay Ending: Using the crush boots open up the highest room in the castle A and destroy the hand statue, then go too the castle center in castle A  and defeat Maxim.

Best Ending:  Collect all 6 pieces of Dracula's remains equip JB's and Mk's bracelet before entering the castle center in castle B and confront Maxim (there is an alternate scene in this ending if you collected and put down all of the furniture in Juste;s room in the castle treasury.)

I really enjoyed playing HoD for this review. As i said i had only intended only laying it once for this review and ended up playing it twice instead. Sure it has it's issues but, at least in my opinion it FAR outclasses Circle of the Moon. For me it is indeed a Hit.

Harmony of Dissonance is currently available on the Wii U virtual Console or on game boy advance as a cartridge or a a dual pack cartridge packed together with Catlevania Aria of Sorrow.

Thanks for reading! See you next month for my next review.

Payday 2 Hit or miss?

I wanted to start with a review of a more recent game before going into some of my childhood favorites later down the line. Payday 2 is the most recent addition to my list of favorites.

Payday 2 is a four-player co-op shooter based on the heist movies of old (ex: Heat, Scarface etc) where you and up to 3 other players worldwide play as 4 of a cast of 17 heisters who will be committing crimes to make as much bank as possible. You do this by taking contracts through the Crime.net system where you can either join a lobby with other players or create your own lobby through the random contracts popping up or using some in game money to buy a contract that you want.

There are currently 5 currencies in-game; spending cash, offshore money, continental coins, skill points and xp. When you and your team complete a contract the whole team will get xp and money for doing so. All players get the same amount of  xp and money (Its not split among players all players get the full amount of money for completion.) Money you get from completing a contract will be split between spending cash and offshore money. Spending cash will be used for buying weapons and equipping them with mods to affect their stats. Offshore money is used for buying contracts you want to play when the random ones appearing on crime.net don't appeal to you and as benchmarks for raising your status among thieves. Continental coins are a bonus for completing cretin challenges and can be used to either buy weapon mods or upgrading your safe house.

Payday 2 has a leveling system where you gain xp to gain levels so you get more skillpoints to go further down the skill trees. This is where we come into the replayability of Payday 2. Max level is 100 but, once you reach 100 you can Infamy to reset your level and gain a level of infamy which goes up to 25. Raising infamy also nets you an infamy point to use on a web of rewards. Playing with many different players around the world

The skill trees are broken into 5 main trees with 3 sub trees in each main tree. Finding what skills best suit your weapons, perks, and armor is what separates good players from bad ones. Teamwork is key however for harder difficulties. Difficulties go from normal to hard to very hard to overkill to mayhem to deathwish to one down. Once you learn the game mechanics however all difficulties below mayhem will become super easy and ypou will probably never even play normal, hard and very hard after you have learned the games mechanics enough.

Now to the elephant in the room.the almost $180 of dlc. This may sound off putting at first but, I would only suggesting getting dlc once you know you like the game enough to play it on a regular basis and even then i would only recommended a few of the dlcs. See overkill had a great idea on how the contracts work. Any player can join any lobby even if a player is joining a dlc contract that they don't have they can still play it. So right off the bat if you aren't going to be hosting a lot of lobbies the dlcs that add contracts are less valuable. Further there are a great number of variety packs that add a good amout of varied content. For those who end up liking the game enough to want to play regularly I would point you towards Connor Shaw's video What DLC to get as i agree with his list of what dlc you should get once you are committed to playing Payday 2 regularly.

Now to the other major problem a lot of people have with Payday 2. the gun skins. Payday 2 has the same skins system as CS GO with skins that have variable rarity and conditions. They went a step further and skins can have stat boost on them that can be as minuscule as 4 stability or accuracy to as good as 3 extra concealment points. A lot of the community blew up when this hit but, in all honesty I don;t think that this system was a bad addition but, the way the large minority self destructed over this was embarrassing to watch.

Payday 2 features 2 styles of play Loud ans Stealth but, some contracts can only be done stealth and some can only be done loud. Stealth is as it sounds you sneak around avoiding detection to complete your objectives. To me stealth is boring and deeply outdated compaired to loud so i won't go deep into it (Jamesblack47's video pretty much sums up my thoughts on stealth.) Loud is more what you would expect from a co-op shooter. You're committing crime after all so the police come in waves to try and stop you. You and your team have to fight off waves of cops while trying to finish your contracts objectives so you can escape into the distance and reap in your rewards.

There really isn't a main story to Payday 2 each contract has pretty much just has a reason for you to be doing it and that's about all for story aside from a few exceptions.  Overall, I really enjoy Payday 2. It's endless replayability means i rarely go a couple days without playing it for a good couple hours. The modding scene adds even more to the game to the point where I've put in 1767 hours into it at the time of writing and still will probably be playing it for years to come.

About What I do.

I'm just an average gamer who has decided that I wanted to leave a mark on the internet with my opinions about some of the games I've played through out my time as a gamer. A lot of the games i will be posting my thoughts on will be either childhood favorites or older games I played later in life.

I'll attempt to update this blog at least 1 to 3 times a month with my thoughts on the games I'm playing now and/or will be replaying for a renewed perspective of a favorite.