With all the buzz around Skyrim and Skyward Sword, I must be one of the few still kicking it in the world of Dark Souls.  For once I don’t feel compelled to keep up with the flow of what is current — I want to stick with what I am enjoying.  Yesterday morning I loaded up Dark Souls to grind for some materials while eating breakfast before the daily commute.  To my surprise I was interrupted with a notification that the game’s newest patch, version 1.05, was available.

Many hardcore fans, myself included, have been waiting for this patch for ages due to some much needed updates.  Here they are at a glance:

BALANCE ISSUES

• Stat scaling boosted across the board
• The much despised Ring of Fog no longer prevents locking on
• Pyromany nerfed slightly
• Various armor and shield stats corrected (including the ever popular Gold Hemmed Set)
• The overpowered Crystal Ring Shield’s long range attack has been significantly weakened
• Increased base equipment load

ENEMIES

• Bosses drop Humanity
• Enemy placement altered slightly in some areas
• Some enemies are worth more souls, and some enemies formally worth no souls new reward the player with souls

MULTIPLAYER

• Online player matching has been altered making it much easier to invade/be invaded or summon/be summoned

So what does all this mean?  Well, the game as a whole has been stabilized and is closer to what the developers intended.  The combination of balance in equipment and more robust online play means a more level playing field.  Personally, I began making some preparation for the patch earlier in the week.  Here is what I’ve been up to:

Stepping up my defense

Like many players, I slapped on the Gold-Hemmed Black Armor set and basically forgot about my armor needs.  The set is light as a feahter and has great resistances to some of the game’s punishing status effects.  It also formally had massive defenses — just to give you an idea, these stats were so high they’ve basically been cut in half.

Hearing whispers of this armor’s impending changes I decided to find anther option, one which would be unchanged post patch.  I found an exceptionally simple and informative wiki which had the stats of gear as it appeared in the Japanese version, which was patched some weeks ago.  I began combing it for the most sustainable gear, sets that would be versatile and best of all withstand the test of New Game+ if need be.

My research proved that many of the game’s earliest, most modest sets can be upgraded well beyond the levels of some end-game armor.  Thus I began increasing the pieces which met my satisfaction both for stats and appearance.  While the pieces I selected may not be maxed, they more than make up for the loss of the Gold-Hemmed Black set.

Stepping up my offense

With the possibility of people invading me on the rise, I need to stay sharp.  I am increasing my arsenal in a few different ways.  First, I want more long range options.  Every character who can lift a crossbow should equip one.  They deal consistent damage and there are a variety of ways to enchant your bow.  You can also fire some powerful bolts which are now easier to find after the patch.  I am also experimenting with the different spears in the game, trying to find one which is a perfect blend of long reach and power.  Spears also make good jabbing weapons, capable of creating an opening for a more heavy-hitting weapon.

As for my heavy-hitting weapons, I am looking to the long term.  That means weapons with good stat scaling which will grow with my character.  This is in contrast to weapons enchanted with either lightning of fire in place of stat scaling.  I already have a katana imbued with lightning, and it tears through most enemies like one of God’s nose hairs.  But I know that in time, other weapons will surpass it, and I want to own one of them.  My highest offensive stat is Intelligence, so I’ve combed the wiki I mentioned earlier for armaments which will be most affected by that stat.

Plotting out my final stats

This is a little more challenging as the effects of the updated stat scaling aren’t entirely clear as of the patch.  Still, here is a great stat planner which you can download and use to simulate any character build you can think of.  The general rule of thumb has been that raising just about any stat beyond 40 was a waste, but we will have to wait and see if this is still the case.

Another commonly held belief is that leveling beyond soul level 100 makes it harder to find others to play with online, as pairing is based on your level.  Again, it is possible that this isn’t the case now that the patch has been released, but it does make sense that there are considerably less level 200 characters than level 100 characters.

***

This is what I have been mulling over when it comes to the updated world of Dark Souls.  The changes make the game feel fresh and new and best of all, more fair for everyone.  So to those of you diving into the game over the long weekend, enjoy the updates and stay on your toes.  You never know who may be invading your game to take your heart of gold.

In my freshman year of college I bought Disgaea: Hour of Darkness on a whim. The cover art and character designs blew me away.  That would become the first title in which my hour count plunged deeply into the triple digits.  I had never experienced a game with so much to do, and I was hooked.  Now, after some financial turmoil, Nippon Ichi has released Disgaea 4.  Do they still have what it takes to churn out the hour-sponges, or has their winning formula dried out?

Story – Iwashi

Disgaea 4 follows a vampire living in the Netherworld named Valvatorez.  His current position in the highly vertical heirarchy of the underworld is Prinny Instructor — in other words, he’s at the bottom.  Valvatorez quite literally trains the penguin-shaped scum of the netherworld how to take abuse — a thankless job if ever there was one.  It wasn’t always like this, though.  He was once a great tyrant, feared by both human and demon.  However, at some point he made a promise to stop drinking human blood, thus becoming considerably weaker and easier to push around.  And when Valvatores makes a promise, he keeps it.  After adopting his new role, Valvatorez and his companion Fenrich notice all is not right in the government of the underworld.  With corruption rearing its ugly head, the gang head off on a journey to investigate.

If you forced me to use one word to describe the story in this, or any Disgaea, that word would be bittersweet.  The series is known for a sharp wit and off the wall jokes.  For instance Valvatorez, unable to drink blood, maintains a portion of his strength by eating sardines.  He is on a vendetta to spread his wealth of knowledge about this modest fish in the hopes that others can be made aware of its greatness.  I learned a lot about sardines.  An awful lot, and Valvatorez’s enthusiasm for the fish was consistently amusing.

So if humor is the sweetness in the bittersweet, the bitterness can be found in each character’s backstory.  While not revealed immediately, the game’s light humor is beautifully dusted with clues to some sad past.  In this manner, the gravity of each helping of bitterness sneaks up on the player until a carefully calculated moment.  While this formula is consistent, through well… nearly every NIS title that comes to mind, it is still executed just as masterfully as the game’s trademark humor.  Still, I would like to see NIS lean on this story mechanic less…  I realize there are constraints from working within a humor-based story, but that is not an excuse.

System – Hi-tech Bribery

Online functionality is more involved than ever, but still the player is just as limited.  I could upload one of my characters to participate in other player’s dark congress assemblies.  If my character was bribed, I could even collect the bribes after the fact.  But I would like to see this go a step further, allowing me to directly affect another player and witness that fact.  I want to be the one who votes.  I want to decide if the bribe I received was good enough.  These desires could easily be game breaking, and perhaps they are, but what I really want is to feel like what I am doing with any online functionality matters.  And I did not feel that way in Disgaea 4 at all.  Upload of player data controlled by the game’s AI is not my idea of successful online functionality.

Most of Disgaea 4’s strategy RPG mechanics are making a return from past iterations.  You still have your base panel, geo blocks and throwing systems.  There are some new features such as the ability to fuse two monster characters into one, much larger, monster.  Oh, and the discipline system, sure to make you blush and laugh uncomfortably.  Ultimately however, if you spent hundreds of hours in Disgaea 3, odds are very good you will spend hundreds of hours in Disgaea 4 essentially doing all the same things.  Let’s face it, grinding is what sucks up the most time, and where grinding is concerned not much has changed.  That’s because  Disgaea 4 is built heavily off the shoulders of Disgaea 3 in terms of system with little in the way of innovation.

Presentation – Moving on up

Visually the franchise has made enormous strides.  Sprite appearances were overhauled resulting in possibly the smoothest most detailed ones I’ve ever seen.  The lush dialog art becomes animated during event scenes, further validating the game’s place on a current gen home console.

Conclusions – Secret Ingredient

If I were a chef and my sous-chef presented me with a bowl of Disgaea 4, I would probably say they did very well but lose points for playing it safe.  The presentation was spotless; in fact, they were a huge improvement.  The execution, while containing some new techniques, is largely nothing new.  Overall the taste is… quite familiar.  Sous-chef Nippon Ichi, I’m afraid this dish needed more heart and less leftovers.

For more of my thoughts on Disgaea 4, please listen to my recent appearance on the PSNation podcast.

Don’t worry, there won’t be any spoilers in this post.  In fact, spoilers are the topic of this post.  I did a great job controlling my intake of Dark Souls info right up to the game’s release.  I wanted to savor it — there are few games which I give this hands-off treatment to, but this was one of them.  But the game was released… and the levies broke.  Scratch that, they exploded.

You see, my friends (online and IRL) seem to have considerably more free time than I do lately.  They either don’t work the full 9 to 5, are continuing their education, or just have less responsibilities in general.  I am not complaining.  When you have less time it makes you focus more on what is actually important — you would be surprised how often video games falls to the bottom of that list.

So back to my friends.  In their wealth of free time they understandably got further in the game than I have.  In a game like Dark Souls, the story isn’t a big feature so it’s hard to spoil much in that regard.  However, the gameplay is everything.  And I’ve found gameplay can be easily be spoiled.

“Hey, check out where you can get this awesome sword.”

“There is a great grinding spot if you ________.”

“Watch out for this hidden enemy when you get here.”

This might not seem like anything game breaking but, in a game where the difficulty directly influences my enjoyment, this knowledge can be powerful.

And I am guilty of this as well.  Wikis are dangerous because they are available to you when a game may not be.  When the desire to play a game becomes its strongest at work, the closest I can come is studying a wikia on my lunch break.  I peek further than I should, I read about what’s just ahead, and when I return home to play, yet another surprise becomes nothing more than a scripted event.

To make matters worse, the burden of information on my shoulders has caused me to recreate my character at least a half-dozen times now.  I can’t settle on a play style and every time I learn something new I feel compelled to start from scratch.  Well, I’ve had it.  I am starting over and doing my best to abandon any information I didn’t earn.  That means avoiding all those great weapons fairly easy to acquire early on.  I’m on the straight and narrow from here on out — my only guidance will be my own wits and the vague messages scrawled by those who preceded me.

To those about to begin their journey in the world of Dark Souls, do yourself a favor and avoid learning anything.  Try to channel that aimless wanderer on your screen and explore for youself — you’ll find you have a much more rewarding experience.

Yesterday the official website for NIS’s upcoming PS3 title, The Witch and the 100 Calvarymen launched.  This title is definitely taking NIS into new territory, described as a dark fantasy sandbox game developed by the same team behind the Prinny: Can I Really Be the Main Character? games.

The story surrounds a witch named Metalica (here’s hoping they change that for the western release) and her summoned familiars.  Metalica is the swamp witch, and she is on a quest to bump off the forest witch — gangsta style.  You know: make her an offer she can’t refuse.  No, but for real, she handles it like all powerful women in NIS titles: by sending their underlings to take care of it.  In this case, Metalica’s underlings consist of 100 animated suits of armor.  The player will assume the role of Metalica’s animated armor familiars and they are free to accomplish her goal in true sandbox fashion: by being a goody-two-shoes, or by being a total jerk.

The dialog art closely resembled that of Disgaea 4 which is promising.  As for the sandbox exploration, that will be in 3D — a dimension which NIS has proven isn’t their strong point:

The action is looking a bit confusing and there is a lot going on all over the screen.  Also, when I first saw this (which was before I knew what system the game was for) I immediately assumed it was for a handheld console and NOT the PS3.  Yikes — if you’re going to be late to the party at least dress up a bit.

Thankfully this sandbox game does feature some RPG elements which will no doubt be explained in greater detail in the future.  I do know that you can level up your 100 Calvarymen and that damage is shown in numerical value.  You can also use some of Metalica’s magic spells via a system called GIGAcal (short for giga calorie).

My initial reaction to this game is concern.  Nippon Ichi has been on thin ice with investors in Japan and that is mostly due to some bad decisions to experiment with different genres and outside development.  Still, unlike the games that rocked the boat in the past, The Witch and 100 Calvarymen does wear the NIS badge a little more openly.  I will be watching this one cautiously, but hope for NIS’s sake they know their limits.

You may have noticed I have a “contact” tab on the top banner of the page.  Most spam bots have.  Every once in a while, a real person notices this link and uses it.  Today, just such an event occurred.  The real person in question happened to be one of the individuals who worked on Ico No Graphix, a fanmade collection of comics and art inspired by Fumito Ueda’s Ico.

I’ve loved Ico for ages now.  Since first playing the game I’ve yet to find many other titles that can even hold a flame to its immersive environment, original world, and refreshing simplicity.  I can say with no hesitation that once I receive my Ico and Shadows of the Colossus HD Collection, Ico will be going in first.  I am sure it will be an intensely nostalgic experience; one that I plan on savoring.

A team of like-minded writers and artists joined forces in the creation of Ico No Graphix.  I downloaded the collection of comics and art and found an enjoyable mix of humor, crossovers, and just plain beautiful Ico inspired art — and all at everyone’s favorite price: free.  If you’re also a fan of the works of Fumito Ueda then download Ico No Graphix today. Oh, and be sure to leave them some feedback love in the comments section as well!

The day has finally arrived: Disgaea 4 is out in the West today!  Nippon Ichi America was kind enough to send me the game a few days early to get started on my review.  While the review may not be ready yet, I can at least offer some valuable information to those starting the game today based on the hours I’ve spent with it.

If you’re the type who prefers to not look up any hints or tips, then by all means ignore the following post.

Controls and UI

There are a number of hot-keys and controls the game does not make clear to the player.  Here are a few:

• R2/L2 = Can be used to scroll through enemy or allied units in battle — as well as show you where portals are in the Item World
• Movement = In battle, while hovering your cursor over a unit, hold square.  This will show you the character’s movement range.
  • Zoom = While holding square to examine movement, you can press R1/L1 to zoom in and out of a map.  Zooming all the way in really highlights the game’s awesome sprites!  Zooming out can help give you an inventory of some of the more complex maps.

Chances are pretty good that Zides will not survive this attack

Disgaea has always provided an accuracy projection before executing an attack.  It’s generally shown in a percentage between 1% and 99% like you see above.  A cool new addition to this feature in Disgaea 4 is damage projection.  You can see both displayed in the screen above.  The red bars signify a character’s HP, while the yellow bar is the projected damage.  If the yellow bar extends beyond the enemy’s HP, the enemy’s HP bar will turn red, meaning it’s fairly likely you will get a kill.  Do note however, that this system does not account for critical hits, so if you’re feeling lucky, go for it!

Valvatorez and Fenrich

So right out of the gate you will start with the obvious story characters: Valvatorez and Fenrich.  The two are inseparable in the story, and should be for all battles as well.  The main reason for this is Fenrich’s Evility, which grants a 30% boost to all his stats when on a panel adjacent to Valvatorez.  No matter what level you’re at in the game, 30% is a huge boost.  The pair are also very well synchronized for team attacks.   Valvatorez’s Evility grants him a 5% stat boost for each enemy he kills, so a good strategy is to maximize the number of units he kills, while Fenrich provides support via team attacks and his high number of counter attacks.  It’s also a good practice to check the Evility of any and all new units you encounter.

Magery

You will be given a random assortment of generic allies early on.  This includes a Cleric, Mage (M), and Warrior (M).  Try to pay attention to what elements enemies are weak against.  Your Red Mage can one-hit a lot of early enemies which are weak to fire.  To examine an enemy’s elemental weaknesses, hover over them and use your right analog stick to scroll through their stats and equipment.   Negative values mean the enemy is weak to that element while positive values mean the enemy is strong to that element:

This senator is weak to wind attacks

Expanding the range of your magic can mean tons of EXP coming your way, so this is something you should maintain regularly.  This can be done via the same NPC who teaches you Evilities and new Skills.  It won’t take long before your Mage can be easily killed by enemies if left unprotected on a map.  If this is becoming a regular occurrence, it may be a good idea to Reincarnate your Mage into a Magic Knight, sacrificing a bit of intelligence for some vastly improved defenses.

Generics

Below is a quick list of how to unlock each generic humanoid character class in the game.  Remember, however, that you must also pass a bill with the Dark Congress to actually be able to create these jobclasses:

• Warrior (M) = Available from start
• Warrior (F) = Available from start
• Mage (M) = Available from start
• Mage (F) = Available from start
• Cleric = Available from start
• Thief = Available from start
• Archer = Cleric and Warrior (F) at level 15
• Gunner = Thief + Mage (M) at level 15
• Shaman = Mage (M) and Mage (F) at level 15
• Beastmaster = Warrior (F) and Warrior (M) at level 15
• Professor = Onmyo Monk and Cleric at level 15
• Heavy Knight = Warrior (M) at level 20
• Masked Hero = Thief and Warrior (M) at level 25
• Ninja = Warrior (M) and Thief at level 30
• Samurai = Warrior (F) and Archer at level 30
• Magic Knight = Any Warrior and any Mage at level 30
• Onmyo Monk = Ninja and Shaman at level 30
• Bouncer = Clear Chapter 8
• Battle Suit = Clear Chapter 9 + Warrior (M) and Heavy Knight at level 30
• Android = Clear the game

If you guys would be interested in more Disgaea 4 support, let me know in the comments and I will start to compile everything the way I did for Disgaea 3 (1,2).

My review should be up soon, hopefully before Tokyo Game Show.  In the meantime, this information should provide an excellent springboard into Hades.  So get out there and start converting your life energy into hours of gameplay — I know that’s what I’ll be doing just as soon as I get out of work!

It didn’t take long for Atlus’s Catherine to generate enormous hype among gamers.  It boasted two qualities we see rarely these days: originality and a desire to show the player something new.  Not an alien at the barrel of a gun, not even a litany of number-saturated menus.  Catherine looked fresh, and alluded to topics generally reserved only for more mature media: sex, commitment, relationships, and the future.  Yours truly became quite swept up in the hype as well, covering its development closely and writing my own speculations at length.  After months of anticipation, I have finally experienced Catherine.  The only matter left to discuss is whether or not it lived up to my expectations.

Story — On The Edge, Edge, Edge Of My Seat

Catherine is about a guy named Vincent Brooks.  He is on the cusp of adulthood: just starting the 9-5 life, still drinking and reminiscing with his friends, all the while in a somewhat serious relationship.  He is content to let things stay the way they are.  But his girlfriend, Katherine, is not.  She knows she is at the age where important life decisions need to be made.  Is this the person she wants to marry?  Does Vincent want to marry her?  What about children?  And so Vincent’s life of complacency is thrown upside down.

The stress from being forced to make these decisions causes Vincent to look for an escape.  He finds it at the bottom of a glass; staying out late drinking with friends.  One night he stays until all his friends head home, leaving him to wrestle with his problems alone.  To his surprise, a girl in white presumptuously takes a seat next to him and begins to chat.  Her name is Catherine.  The hours and drinks melt away.  Catherine seems easygoing and makes it clear she just wants to have fun.  This resonates with Vincent and the next morning he is rudely awoken with Catherine in bed next to him.  In looking for an escape from his problems, he has done the unthinkable: cheated on his girlfriend.

Soon he begins having horrifying dreams in which he and hoards of sheep are forced to climb an elaborate tower or face death.  In the real world, young men begin dying mysteriously in their sleep, their faces contorted in fear.  Vincent begins to wonder if his mysterious dreams have a connection.  If that weren’t enough, he must also navigate the treacherous terrain of maintaining relationships with two women.

If this synopsis doesn’t make you squirm, then you are a stronger person than myself.  And this uneasiness is where Catherine’s story succeeds: it presents the player with real life stresses — ones that most people can surely relate to on some level.  Possibly the biggest factor in the game’s realism is its cast of developed characters.  I couldn’t help but see a bit of myself in Vincent especially.  Am I the same cowardly, complacent, lazy, indecisive mess?  At times it sure feels that way.  Even his current place in life was all too familiar.  I work the 9-5, drink with my old friends from high school when I can find the time, and still don’t have a clue what to make of my future.  It’s strange seeing the flaws of real individuals in video game characters.  But I like it.  In this way Vincent is the ultimate anti-hero in that, despite (or perhaps because of) his numerous vices, you can see yourself in him.

Catherine’s story may be a bit of a boys club, however.  I found myself very much invested in the protagonist and his friends.  Their conversations were so real — I even found myself thinking about them during real life late night chats with my friends.  ”It’s just like in Catherine“, I thought.  But this feeling I fear may not be one that female gamers will share, for women are little more than a decision to be made in Catherine — and a relatively black and white decision at that.  I would love to have seen this game with an option to play as Katherine in a similar situation as Vincent to round out the genders.  If the same level of realism could be captured in her… that would have been a real breakthrough for the medium.

Gameplay — Here Lies Some Dualshock Controllers, Goddammit

The player advances in Catherine’s story through a series of days in the life of Vincent.  The passage of time follows a daily pattern :

First is the story sequence.  This generally takes place during the day and consists of cutscenes which are either animated:

or in stylized CG:

Both feature great art direction, color, and style. The duration of these scenes never became so heavy-handed that I felt like I was bogged down in cinematics; rather, they advance the story at a decent pace.

Next is the bar sequence at Stray Sheep.  This is how Vincent ends his waking hours: drinking and talking with friends.  This part is my favorite due to the variety of activities, and relatively laid-back atmosphere.  You can order drinks and knock ‘em back which earns you fascinating cocktail trivia.  I’m not exaggerating, either: some of these facts will change the way you think about booze (if you think about it at all).  You can converse with your friends, fellow bar patrons, or Stray Sheep employees.  The more you do so, the more involved you become in their lives and ultimately their future.  Some of these characters have really interesting and sordid backstories which inspired me to chat with them whenever possible.  You can also play an arcade mini-game which mimics the puzzle portion of Catherine, but in a retro style.  As time passes, patrons will come and go and you will also receive texts which you can either ignore or carefully populate a response to.

Replying to texts from the game’s leading ladies (among other actions) alters Vincent’s alignment.  This will cause a gauge to appear on screen to show his current standing.  You won’t find out what the gauge means until after finishing the game, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a gauge at all.  Your alignment is used to help generate one of 8 possible endings.  Depending on your alignment at certain points in the story, Vincent will behave differently.  This feature felt a little tacked on; just a way to encourage replays for a relatively short game.  However, I admit to having only played through once — perhaps on multiple playthroughs this system’s value becomes more apparent.  i doubt it.

Last is the action portion of Catherine, which takes place in Vincent’s nightmares.  Here you will begin by tackling a map consisting entirely of blocks which you must climb quicker than the rate at which they are collapsing below you.  Some blocks can be moved to eek out a foothold allowing you to advance.  As you progress up the tower, new layers of complexity are added to this simplistic formula.  Soon there will be blocks that explode, impale you, ones that propel you, etc.  Not paying attention to a single step could mean certain death (requiring you to start over entirely unless you reached a checkpoint).  Upon clearing a level, Vincent will arrive at a hub where we may interact with other sheep, some of whom the player may recognize from the real world.  Finally, you will answer a rather personal question (not recommended in front of a loved one) before being rocketed to the next level.  On each night, the last floor will also include a boss who can either kill Vincent or manipulate the map — or both.  Yay.

This is a good time to discuss Catherine’s difficulty.  I completed the game on normal, and I am darn proud of that.  More than once the devil on my shoulder suggested bumping it down to easy.  ”Just clear the story, what do you care!?” But my resolve remained stalwart.  That should be an indication that this game… is hard.  Old school hard.  Various NPCs help out by providing techniques, and there are checkpoints scattered throughout levels allowing you to maintain a bit of a foothold.  Still, what it really boils down to is cold memorization of levels.  By the end-game, luck starts to become more important with blocks that randomly generate requiring lightning fast decisions and no small amount of frustration.  I turned this game off out of anger at least once, and I am normally a pretty laid back dude.  So if you have a spot in your backyard where you bury the shattered remains of Dualshock controllers, you may want to buy some Valium before sliding Catherine into your disc tray.

Presentation — TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 5… R-R-R-R-R-REMIX!

Catherine is the first HD game by Atlus, and it feels like an HD game.  They did a great job capturing the anime aesthetic with modern graphics — surely a difficult task to accomplish.  The art direction and character design is cohesive and reminiscent of a modern day fusion of Eastern and Western pop cultures.  The score (bundled with the game if you pre-ordered — thanks Atlus!), a blend of famous classical works remixed by Shoji Meguro, serves as perhaps the best symbol for a game breaking into new technology while maintaining old school roots.  This is one tidy, well put-together package.

Conclusions

I thought Catherine would change gaming in a big way — I was fairly convinced of it, in fact.  But the story became shaky by the end — I suspect this was when the faulty alignment system began deciding my ending.  And the difficulty drove me to longing for an end out of frustration rather than a genuine desire to witness my ending.  In some ways, however, it did trailblaze.  I can honestly say that never before have I played a game with conversations and characters as identifiable as those in Catherine (if you’re a dude, bro).  Also, the game is dripping with style, from its simple UI to its sweeping soundtrack.  But isn’t this something we’ve just come to expect from Atlus rather than something new?  Catherine may not have been the revolution in gaming I had hoped, but it was still one memorable climb.

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD was released in Japan this week. The title is the pioneer of Sony’s PSP Remaster Series, allowing gamers to play on-the-go via their PSP, upload their save data to their PS3 and then continue the game in HD. Rinse and repeat. However, the new technology is causing waves in the Japanese Monster Hunter community.

A number of gamers who purchased the Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD are reporting that their save files are being deleted in the process of transferring it from their PSP to the PS3. This has caused the title’s rating on Amazon to plummet. Some players are reporting losing upwards of 500 hours and giving up on the game entirely.  As a huge fan of the series, I can only imagine how devastating this must feel…

Others are blaming the issue on simple user error, as the process is somewhat complicated.  A Japanese gamer I follow on Twitter elaborated by adding that they had heard some users were accidentally transferring their Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD save file (which was of course blank) to their PSP, overwriting their hard-earned hours.

So here comes the PSA portion of this post.  To anyone who imported Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD and plans on transferring their save file from their PSP version, here is a simple step to mitigate any save file loss:

BACKUP YOUR SAVE FILE.  Back it up everywhere.  Put a copy on your computer, a copy on your PS3, a copy on your thumb drive or portable hard-drive.  For the love of all that is holy, you cannot have too many copies!  This simple step takes hardly any time but can protect your hours of hard work.  From there it should be a simple process of trial and error.  If anyone out there figures it out and has the capabilities, a YouTube tutorial would be a great asset to the community!

Hopefully in the near future Capcom and/or Sony will step forward and provide a little more guidance to their floundering consumers.  I only hope this message reaches all the hunters out there in time, before any more innocent save files are snuffed out of existence.

I can’t tell if this Dark Souls trailer is cool or not.  Perhaps I am so numb to the monotonous world of video game marketing that I can’t tell what is up and what is totally lame.  The song featured in the video is Bartholomew by The Silent Comedy.  In addition to a subtle urge to headbang, the video also gives us a look at some new enemies and, conversely, new ways to meet a gruesome death.  Perhaps I should start arranging my own soundtrack to die to over and over again while playing Dark Souls this October — just in time for my birthday

My PSP Go has been getting quite the workout lately, and I haven’t for a moment regretted my decision to pick one up.  On the contrary, each announcement of a classic being added to PSN is another excuse to take advantage of the versatility it affords me.  Recently, Christian Svensson (a name appearing on this blog quite frequently: 1,2) announced via the Capcom Unity forum that just such a classic is headed our way: Breath of Fire IV.

My memories of countless hours spent with video games are speckled with few but lucid moments of pure awe.  A handful of these unforgettable moments come from Breath of Fire IV.  It had an aesthetic all its own, a creative dual-storytelling device, and some of the most powerful moments I have ever experienced in any medium.  I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, and frankly I don’t care if I do: this was one hell of a game.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Give this song from the game a listen if you have the time

Now, I will have the opportunity to slap such a beloved title onto a device I carry with me almost everywhere.  At the end of the day I can stretch out on the couch and play it on my television for the full effect.  If I am lucky I can even use a Dualshock 3 controller as well.  This is the ultimate culmination of modern technology and beloved classics.  This is great news.  This is the best news.  August 16th can’t come soon enough.