Get outta here, September. Finally starting to feel like autumn around here. About time!
Lots of ground to cover on this post, but as usual, I’m gonna start off with the work segment. We’re currently in the middle of remodeling the department. The coolest part of the remodel is that now we have a gaming display near the registers. There’s two TVs, one with a 360 and one with a PS3. At the 360, one or two people can play Halo: Reach. On the PS3, you can sample the Move and… Whatever the sports game is that comes with it.
The town I work in is chock full of casuals, so I expected the Move display to be at least somewhat popular. Nope. Nobody gives a flying fuck about it. Reach, on the other hand, almost always has at least one person at it and usually another person or two watching/waiting in line. People take one look at the Move and dismiss it for what it is: A pitiful Wii knockoff. Of course, I wouldn’t call it that without a valid reason. I actually tried the Move myself. “Sure, it’s painfully unoriginal, but maybe the motion tracking tech will impress me”, I thought. Wrong. The original Wii Sports still looks like a technological marvel compared to this crap. The Move is going to crash and burn, and I’m going to be rocking this face the whole time. Nintendo won the motion control game four years ago, Sony. Deal with it.
Onto personal gaming stuff. I mentioned in my last regular post that Arc sent me four games for my birthday. That was at the end of July. I’ve only made time for two of them thus far: Mega Man Legends and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. Let me start off by talking about Legends for a bit. As a kid, I rented Legends. A lot. I remembered the final boss, but I couldn’t remember if I ever beat him or not. Legends hit a sweet spot for me that no other game has before. It had been just long enough since my last playthrough that I couldn’t remember anything that happened ahead of time. As events unfolded, they felt new and fresh, but once they did, I was hit with a sudden wave of, “Oh yeeeah! I remember that!”
I can easily see why I had such a good time playing it as a kid: Legends is one of the most downright charming games I’ve ever played. It took me about an hour to get used to the controls, but otherwise, it’s aged extremely well. It’s not terribly long, the story’s not all that complex, and the gameplay doesn’t really do anything special, but everything about it just oozes charm. I think I can safely say that it reestablished itself as one of my top 10 favorite games of all time. Where on that list, I don’t know, since I’m fucking awful at putting my favorite anythings in order, but it’s up there.
>mfw Legends 3 was confirmed
I “completed” it on Normal in a little over ten hours. I was having such a good time with it, I went ahead and plowed through it on Hard (under 5 hours) for true :C: status. I should really get serious about tracking down a copy of Legends 2, especially now that Legends 3 was confirmed for the 3DS. If anybody’s got a copy of MML2 that they would part with, hit me up.
Now for much less glamorous game accounts. First up, Portrait of Ruin. Pretty sweet stuff. I can’t think of nearly as much to say about it as I just did MML, but it was a fun trip. Definitely one of the better Metroidvanias, but I still preferred Ecclesia and Aria. Some broworkers and I all grabbed the original Left 4 Dead on impulse, plowed through the campaign and then never touched it again. I feel like it didn’t get the love it deserves. I’d like to play with some folks from The Brologgery, but I’m still way too addicted to Reach to bother with L4D at the moment. Someday, though!
Speaking of Reach… Reach is good. Reach is really good. How good is Reach? Really, really good. I could write a full review and then some. I may just do that, because this post is already going to be long enough as it is. Did I mention Reach is really good?
Winter Contingency
On the subject of not-Reach, I’ve kind of gotten into Scott Pilgrim lately. Backloggery was abuzz with chatter about the game, so I, having never even heard of Scott Pilgrim before, downloaded the trial to see what all the hype was about. Pretty sweet stuff. Everybody says this, but it’s true: It plays like a modern day River City Ransom. Naturally, the game led to interest in the new movie. I unlocked the full version of the game, shut the Xbox off, then went to see it. The movie snowballed into buying the books off of Amazon. The entire series kinda rocks.
Last but not least on the gaming front, there’s this sweet little gem I’ve been neglecting on account of Reach being so good, and that gem is Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale. Chances are you’ve seen at least one person around Backloggery playing this by now. Basically, you play an adorable little girl named Recette. You and your loan-shark fairy Tear open an item shop, aptly dubbed “Recettear”, as a means to pay off your father’s debt. You buy low/sell high from other vendors and tackle 2D Zelda-esque mystery dungeons in order to procure things to sell in your shop. The more business your shop gets, the more complex the shop managing mechanics get. You go from simply selling things off the shelves to doing things like recommending items to customers and taking preorders on specific items.
In short, it’s just a really charming, unique and addictive game that shouldn’t be overlooked. Twenty bucks is a little hefty (this coming from a big fan of the game), but thankfully there’s a free demo up on Steam. Grab that and see what you think. I clocked in around two hours on the demo prior to buying the full thing. Definitely long enough to get a decent taste of things to come. Try it out!
The anime season is winding down, and that means shit I love coming to an end. Thankfully, I’m pretty sure everything I watched this season has some sequel work in the making. K-ON! is getting a movie (so I hear, anyway), Mitsudomoe is getting a second season next spring and I’m pretty sure Highschool of the Dead is getting a second season as well.
Sad to see K-ON!! go. I’ve dabbled in a lot of shows (by my standards, anyway) this year, but K-ON!!’s been my main squeeze since April. It outdid the first season in pretty much every way. It easily takes the cake for the most consistent anime I’ve ever seen from a visual standpoint. I’m too lazy to find a screenshot, but there was only one QUALITY moment in the entire season (Ritsu’s eye looked gimped up in one of the later episodes). Ah well. It was fun while it lasted, but better for it to have a true, bittersweet ending than degrade into NEVER-AGING MOEBLOBS FOREVER.
I found a new favorite in Mitsudomoe. I’m pretty sure I’ve said all of this before, but it’s just a downright funny show. The art’s not great and there’s absolutely no plot, but it’s chock full of constant (immature) humor. Really glad that it’s getting a second season. Gotta thank Ant again for recommending it, because I’m positive I would’ve overlooked it otherwise.
I still haven’t actually seen the final episode of Highschool of the Dead and I’ve already got a pretty massive word count on this post, so I guess I’ll just leave that for next time. I’m still slowly (like 1-episode-biweekly slowly) getting through B Gata H Kei, as well. Going to be keeping an eye on the following next season: Iron Man, To Aru Majutsu no Index II and OreImo. I’ll be open to recommendations after the second or third week of the season, though. I like to have one completed show to watch alongside the new season’s offerings, so I’m looking around. Might give Durarara a shot. I hear it’s pretty nice.
Alright, post over. brb, Reach.
