I've followed Demon's Souls a little bit by reading some articles and reviews online, but I couldn't really help thinking that a 3D action-RPG would end up playing like Morrowind or Oblivion, two games I couldn't really get into. I don't know if I should say that those two games are BAD games, but I think that providing a player with too many choices, or at least too many irrelevant choices, leads to a diluted game. If a player can make a retarded half-orc with a mongoloid face and run around the countryside killing cows, smashing furniture, and raping people in villages, that's probably all they'll end up doing. At least, that's what I do in those games. I guess it usually doesn't really feel like there's much impetus to save the princess and kill the bad guy when there are so many other things that you can do.

The other problem that I have with those games is that I feel like RPGs and action games usually end up being one or the other, with no game really being an "action-RPG". When I think of a game being heavy in the RPG department, I think of having lots of options for equipping and developing characters, with a need for the player to put a lot of thought into stat allocation, weapon and armor selection, and job or class assignment. Combat in these games is usually turn based and menu driven. Action games might include some light RPG elements, but typically the focus is on making the game fun to play, with cool animations and tight controls. The strategic element here is usually based more on learning patterns, taking advantage of the environment, and the kind of reflexive playing that is usually associated with action games. In my opinion, games like Morrowind and Oblivion don't provide too many options for character development and the combat is limited and sometimes frustarting. Somehow they manage to take the worst of both worlds and create a game that barely stands on its own, with the real appeal being the kind of open world freeform gameplay made popular by games like Grand Theft Auto 3.

Demon's Souls is a very linear game. I mean, you can choose which level you want to go to, and the levels are really huge, but if you would describe Morrowind or Oblivion as "nonlinear," then Demon's Souls is essentially a Mega Man game. I think this is one of the game's biggest strengths, however. You see, Demon's Souls is a better RPG than most pure RPGs and a better action game than most dedicated action games. The amount of options for creating and customizing your character is really impressive. You collect souls throughout the game, which replace both currency and experience points, that are used for purchasing equipment, purchasing spells, levelling up your character, levelling up your weapons and armor, and a few other things. This gives you a lot of options, as you can forego equipment and consumables in the interest of levelling up more quickly, or you can delay your development in order to purchase better gear and healing items to make it past a tough point. The controls are tight and responsive, with a stamina system that makes sense and adds a lot of strategy to melee combat. Any time you swing your weapon or block an attack with your shield, stamina is lost, and if your stamina were to hit zero, you actually accrue a bit of negative stamina, which has to recover before you can do anything. Of course, you can increase the amount of stamina you have through levelling up your character's endurance. This is an example of how well the RPG and action elements of Demon's Souls integrate with each other. There's a huge selection of weapons, each with a different style, which means that while you might have a favorite, you will probably carry at least two with you to respond to changes in the environment and your enemies' armor types.

I don't really want this to be a review of Demon's Souls, but I want to talk about why I like it. Demon's Souls feels really meaty and in-depth, the kind of game that you could play for hours and hours like Final Fantasy Tactics, just for the fun of levelling up and customizing your dude (and his gear). On the other hand, Demon's Souls would fit right in at an arcade, in my opinion, with its huge bosses, fast combat, and great controls. When you're in the Nexus (the hub of the game) you have a lot of choices, as I've said, for how to prepare for the next section or, in most cases, how to retry whatever section you've just failed. During the actual levels, however, the game is moving so fast and you have so much fun just fighting guys that you don't really stop to even think about levelling up or allocating points. In fact, there have been times where I've gone in to a level just to grab one or two things to level up my weapon, and I end up just playing the level for an hour or two instead. I've only had the game for a three day weekend, but I've played it for 15 hours already. I know that's not much compared to how much time some people spend playing Street Fighter 4 or Dragon Quest 5, but for me it's a lot. In fact, as an example of how easy it is to get absorbed in this game, I played for about 8 hours before I realized I could talk to the girl in the Nexus to level up. I played for about 14 hours before I realized I could buy spells in the Nexus.

I also think that the multiplayer component is really cool. Co-op and PvP are both available, but I haven't experienced either yet. What I like is the system of being able to leave and rate messages left by other people. The messages might contain clues about enemies' weaknesses or nearby treasure, or sometimes they might be there to ask for help. Whenever you rate someone's message (or they yours) the person who left the message regains all of his health, which gives you incentive to try to help people out. Even cooler than that, is you can click on pools of blood on the ground and see a red ghost dude pop up and watch how he or she died, which might save you from the same fate. Also, at times, you will see white ghosts running around, which I'm pretty sure are other people playing at the same time, so even though you aren't interacting with them directly, the game feels like you're playing with tons of people. I really like this system and hope it's used by more games.

All in all, this is probably one of the best game I've ever played. As a kid I always wondered what games would be like as technology advanced, but I didn't really expect them to be as terrible as most games are now. I would kind of dream about games like this. If I didn't own a PS3, I would buy one just to play Demon's Souls. If Demon's Souls comes out on PSP, I'll buy a PSP. I just can't stop gushing like a gay little girl about this stupid game.

This is harsh. Evaluate me.

Last year in September I drove an hour out of Seattle to play Street Fighter 4; it kicked off 3 months of playing the game an average of 3 nights a week. It felt like words couldn't express how amazing the experience of playing it was that first night. I only picked Ryu because I am generally very comfortable with shoto mechanics. Game sort of felt like Alpha/CvS games mixed with 3rd Strike, but with no overbearing system mechanics so SF2 traditional matchups were pretty similar. Just like Alpha 2, Ryu could link a lot of his crouching moves. I won a few games vs the scrubbier players that first night before watching a dude who I'd later find out is one of the best local players getting a 30+ win streak with Ken, in fact after losing to him 2-3 times I went and grabbed a spicy chicken sandwich at Wendy's and came back and it was about a half hour until the bowling alley closed so I just drove home, it would be one of the few times I ever left an SF4 session before the establishment closed down.

Fast forward 5 months, 2 local tournaments, hundreds(maybe a thousand?) of matches played, hundreds of dollars spent on credits and a 2 month break and SF4 finally came to console. It came out just a week after my employment was put in question and 9 people in my company, several of them my friends were laid off. This didn't really deter my excitement; I was calling a few shops every day to see if i could get the game even 24 hours early. I called the Game Crazy I worked at nearly 10 years ago and happen to now live 10 minutes from and the dude on the phone said they had one copy left. I left work immediately not caring if anyone noticed me cutting out early, picked it up and despite being really tired at 4pm played for about 8 hours that night. By night 2 I was pushing dangerously close to the top 100 ranked players.

Then something happened.. The game got frustrating. I will blame most things on playing online and alone. But with lag anything that is normally frustrating becomes a mental earthquake..

Jump back from Zangief doing an empty jump into ultra? Nope not with a quarter second delay you wont.

Jump or counter hit on reaction any charge type character move(Blanka ball, Honda headbutt, Balrog dash punch, etc), nah sorry that will hit you half the time for free.

Trying to play footsies with a sagat? Hm good luck because anytime you buffer a move and put yourself out of holding back/down back you are basically letting the game know that you can't block on reaction to anything.

I suppose I started to feel so cheated in my losses that I couldn't take it, but screaming "Faggot" at the LCD screen became an every day occurrence. I'm sure my neighbors think there is something wrong with me. There probably is. I think shit got more serious to me once I had my first disconnector. It was probably 200 games into playing. A few weeks later I found out that he was at the tournaments in my area that I went to. I lost to him twice and upon beating him in the 3rd match he disconnected and after a message to him he responded with "Those throws were bullshit."

The lack of personal connection makes something like that really hard to take. In general the game feels really different without other people around. At the arcade a streak becomes a king of the hill type moment, every match is another chance to hold your ground. Everyone viewing your matches, trying to analyze your play for when their turn comes up. On ranking I might start winning a few in a row and I don't really feel any rush from it, it's just playing. Every match resets the momentum. Gain some points, lose some points. It is cool to see your skill put in a context but with the system being so flawed it doesn't really mean anything. Maybe it doesn't mean much to end a huge streak in the arcade and get applause from the crowd, or have people who don't play the game in awe and ask you questions about the game. But those things are a novelty and break up the practicing. They keep things interesting and add standout moments. A great match is interesting but I tend to forget the close matches i've had a few days later. I happen to remember when someone taps me on the shoulder and says "Are you the one winning?"

The other day I logged on and created a player match. No one challenged me. At any given time I have around 5-10 people on my friend list online playing SF4. I invited 2 people and there was no response but I imagine they were playing or busy. I sat for a minute and just thought "SF4 online is lonely. This is lonely."

I don't really buy new games too often because I'm broke, but the demo for this was dope as heck so I ended up picking it up on Friday. I always feel pretty good about the RE series even though I haven't played any of them since RE2, but that's cool because I can't imagine any of them were better than RE2 anyway. I'm kind of gay about games and shit so when I didn't play RE3, I never played any of the others either because I kept thinking, "Gotta play RE3 first." I know I'm never gonna go back and play all that shit, though, so I figured I may as well just pick up RE5.

What I liked about RE1 and RE2 was that the games were kind of unforgiving, and you could potentially get into situations where you were fucked on ammo and had to start the game over or at least go back a few saves if you had multiple files. Also, even saving the game was something that kind of required you to weigh the pros and cons. I guess the RE games to me were kind of about resource management, and the fact that the controls were kind of awkward for aiming and stuff made shit pretty tense.

Using those aspects as criteria, I guess you'd say RE5 isn't a Resident Evil game at all. I'm pretty sure it was the same way with 4, but I never played that either. RE5 has really easy controls (though I know people who play Gears of War and shit probably hate standing still while shooting) and all of the dudes drop ammo pretty regularly. In fact, I'm pretty sure they only drop ammo for whatever guns your dudes have equipped, so it kind of streamlines inventory management as well. The bosses are cool but even if you die you start right there again, so there's not really a lot of pressure. I guess it's kind of been a trend that games get easier and more forgiving as it becomes possible for game developers to make games bigger and longer. I think even if you played through RE5 as fast as you could it'd probably still be over 10 hours long. The old RE games would probably take 10 hours your first time through, but then as you learned the game you could get through them pretty quickly, which made them pretty dope for playing through in an afternoon or something.

That's another difference between the new RE games and the originals. Everything's divided into levels now, instead of having one big Metroid style area to explore. I mean, I never really compared the RE games to Metroid in my mind, but I guess it's basically the same concept. I guess what I'm saying is that RE5 is fun as hell, and thematically it still kind of feels like an RE game to me, but all of the things that made RE games kind of unique have been removed from the equation.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/demons-souls-boosts-japan-ps3-sales

Demons Souls #2 in Japan this week and presumably SF4 will be #1 or 2 next week/this week... That kinda owns.

I want Demons Souls so bad. Why does my job situation have to be so uncertain? I would buy a damn PS3 this instant just to play it and nothin else.

In my personal quest for SF4 Gamestop managed to totally fuck over my preorder for the TE stick, sent me a PS3 version and then were so unhelpful about sending me a replacement that I called 4 times and probably spent 2 hours total on the phone with various reps. The situation actually got worse from the first time I called where a dude said "We will send out a replacement tomorrow when we get confirmation of you sending yours back" When I finally did send the stick back it was like "And? What do you want us to do, faggot?" I tried asking if I could just charge another stick and be refunded whenever for the PS3 one they sent me when they get it back, I get the feeling they thought I was a kid trying to scam them out of a preorder-only item. After asking for a manager and really being a general pain in the ass on the phone that I'm not proud of the best they could do is guarantee that I would have a stick by the 23rd. Wow a week after SF4 comes out, thanks idiots. Sorta defeats preordering doesnt it.

I ended up just ordering an HRAP EX overnight from Amazon. It should be at my place after I get off work today.

Now if only I could find a place already selling SF4 this weekend. Pretty bogus how all the pirates are already playing this shit and I'm willing to buy fuckin TWO copies of this shit and I can't even get one until next tuesday. If I knew where to buy a Japanese copy I'd probably even do that. I had a dream last night that I found a copy at Target, I'd like to think it was premonition but I'll probably just end up playing HD Remix for a while with the HRAP and then go back to 3rd Strike on ggpo SIGH

http://www.jp.playstation.com/scej/title/demons-souls/

So this game comes out in about a week. I'm a pretty big Kings Field fan. And when I say pretty big.. I mean really big. Probably in the top 10 Kings Field fans in the US. I know there are only 20 of us but........

I nearly bought a PS3 this week just to play this game(Ridge Racer 7 would be a decent bonus I guess). I just can't grasp what its all about though. Developed by From, published by Sony. It looks vaguely horror themed what with sort of twisted versions of classic fantasy beasts and some Lovecraftian looking horrors. Kings Field has battles vs large enemies but this game seems to borrow from the populariity of SOTC and moreso Monster Hunter in trying to bring big, directed boss fights to a Kings Field-ish game.

I want to believe this is like Kings Field but really two things make me think it won't be the case at all: 3rd person view and multiplayer. Both of those are sort of against the whole Kings Field experience I would say. Not that 3rd person wouldn't fix the problem with jumps being difficult in KF games sometimes. Playing with other people might be fun.

But the big thing is the difference that persistence brings to these games. What happens when you login to play with your buddies who are all level 99? You go grind for items over and over from a boss or area of the game? I dont know. KF is like a maze more than anything else, it is like Metroidvania in 3D but actually a challenge. Leveling up isnt all that important. Sure you might want to grind a few levels at points in the game to create a "cushion" for yourself or soften up difficult areas but you generally don't feel the need to do it unless you are really stuck. More about exploration and atmosphere I think.

Looking at the "area" section of the Japanese site I also notice what seems to be something possibly borrowed from Monster Hunter. It looks like there are a bunch of themed hub sort of areas. Little "mini-worlds" I guess I would call them. Broken-down old castle, creepy mines(always the worst part of KF games), sort of brick alchemy lab thing or possibly an old mansion and a factory type area are what I see on the site so far. Just looking through the pics it doesn't look all that varied, sort of a Diablo vibe I get from the whole thing. I dont know, it also appears that there are different classes or at the very least all your gear changes your appearance.

If Ninja Blade = Ninja Gaiden ripoff(Though totally insane looking one), then I guess this really is a ripoff of Monster Hunter. So is From Software just a really decent "copycat" game factory now?

Damn I really want a new Kings Field game.

I got to thinking just a little more about something.. The arcade versions of the Konami games had significantly more powerful sound capabilities. I may have been hasty in thinking the compositions were for systems like the NES or X68000. It doesn't make them any less great but my image of such bleak tone in the music is perhaps colored by the fact that these are interpolations of songs put on a platform that can basically play 1 lead note, 1 note for harmony/chord tones and 1 note for bass.

So maybe the NES has more to do with the image of the music than I previously thought.

Lately I listen to the Salamander X68000 soundtrack on youtube at work about 4 times a day.



Not quite sure why I find this game's music so interesting but I remember feeling really particular emotionally back when I was a child playing it. Lately at work I feel invigorated listening to it. Refreshing myself with those emotions. I've listened to a few Tony Robbins cds because my life is a wreck. Not much he talked about stuck with me except one thing: Being in a "state." Its a a clever way to mentally organize your emotions I think, most people do it instinctively. A few things line up, sights and sounds, a chat with someone, whatever.. And they affect your physical and emotional levels. When you need to feel a certain way you have to find ways to "recall your state." Tony Robbins suggests taking inventory of your physical state mostly. But listening to game music seems to be a really easy way for me to recall states. Unlike waking up a certain way and just feeling awesome all day there isn't much mystery when I put on some game music. Familiar melodies and aural textures don't change, my childhood is already past so there is no rewriting that period of time.

When I think of Lifeforce I think of sitting alone, about 8 years old. I had rented the game because of it's amazing cover art probably. Maybe beginning my associations with the Konami box art template that would make me end up renting every Konami game I could. The music is one of the first things you notice. Sinister and foreign sounding, I'd like to know what kind of notes the composer had about this stuff, mentally or otherwise. I've read a woman wrote it which is pretty interesting. I can't actually imagine what influenced this. Unlike the Castlevania music, or the music in many shooters back in that era which were all obviously influenced by 80s metal.. Lifeforce and a few other Konami games that have similar harmonic themes seem to occupy this space where Japanese composers, who I would assume had little other media composition experience were attempting to combine the discordant Hollywood Science fiction film scores with uptempo rock music. Of course also trying to do this on platforms with 3-6 channels of polyphony and filtering the whole thing through what I imagine is a lot of unique regional music, like I know japan has that interesting Okinawan enharmonic chanting.

Who knows where I was going with this. I just like this music, as a unique gem that seems to be so off in its own world aesthetically. It makes sense that its one of the stronger memories of game music I have; it is special. The only things I think I have stronger memories of are like Megaman 1-2, Castlevania and Metroid.. Maybe Mario from the shear man hours put into it.